A Predator Among Us
by Demod20
Summary: The Battle between Rukia Kuchiki and Aaroniero Arruruerie, reach the ultimate climax. Due to the overwhelming power gap between Shinigami and Hollow, the young beloved Kuchiki becomes a victim to Aaroniero's cruel gluttonous maw. With no one to know of her demise, Aaroniero moves among allies and enemies alike, aiming to continue his rampage without ceasing or halt!
1. Greed's True Form

**A Predator Among Us**

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**Chapter 1 - Greed's True Form**

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"**Devour, Glotonería!**"

Those two haunting words echoed the dimly lit chambers that was Aaroniero Arruruerie and Rukia Kuchiki's battlefield. A seal in form of a tubular proboscis that wriggled like a worm expanded in a fattening sea of dark purple flesh. This expansion would give way to a mutated towering frame of gelatinous tissue, comparable to that of the most hideous invertebrate species. A pair of teeth grinned hungrily on either flank of bubbling frontal surface, gargantuan crimson eyes beading down at its victim. Worst of all, the body of Kaien Shiba, bound in Espada attire raised his Shikai in proclamation down at his enemy.

"Left you speechless, haven't I, Rukia?" Aaroniero inquired with Kaien's voice and a uncharacteristic sneer spreading over its duplicated face. Waving his arms in a flamboyant manner, he could only look down at his enemy and victim of psychological torture. "Standing before you is the form that equals the totality of all aspects that I've absorbed. Over thirty thousand Hollows, give or take a few hundred, capable of being called upon while I'm in this state. And that is just touching the tip of the proverbial iceberg of what my Ressureccion can do!"

Rukia down below was left speechless. Over five stories tall, her enemy had grown into a monolith of terrifying proportions. Not only the body of her beloved superior and friend was sitting atop like a sacrilegious crown, atop a disgusting head, but the sheer magnitude of her foe weighed heavily on her.

"_His Reiatsu is on a whole other scale in comparison to when he was fighting me prior_," Rukia thought with widened eyes and a mouth agape with shaky gasping breaths. "_it feels like Kaien yet I can feel so many others. No Arrancar I've faced or seen had such a sinister sensation. It truly feels like I'm facing a legion of beings rather than a singular one. What a horrible monster this Espada is!_"

"Here I come, Rukia!" Aaroniero shouted aloud with a maniacal smile stretching across his face.

Rukia was quick to snap out of her terror ridden daze. Leaping back, her body sailed in the air, watching the ground she previously stood upon quickly be rolled over by the slimy behemoth. Before her feet even touched the ground, the bestial creature would almost be on top of her in a disorienting charge of swift momentum.

"He's fast for his si-" Rukia began to comment, finding herself halted dramatically by a bludgeoning impact. A smaller sized tendril near the front of the mouthless section of Aaroniero, from an outward perspective, finger flicked the diminutively sized Shinigami backwards. The impact alone would cause the air to pop and split visibly in a vertically elliptic shape, sending a bullet wave of force to follow Rukia's careening frame.

Hitting the ground, she rolled head over foot, landing unceremoniously onto her front. As soon as the wind returned to her lungs and the stars left her eyes, she pushed herself up slowly to her feet. Looking over her shoulder, she could see the eerie dim lighting casting a dark silhouette over the monstrosity that gleamed menacingly upon her frame. Eyes wide and breath hitched, her body shook with trepidation in the face of her inevitable killer.

"Not going to fight back? How sad," Aaroniero mocked openly with outspread arms, "I'm so disappointed in you! The Rukia I knew wouldn't give up so easily. Or is it, you're simply showing your true colors as a coward?"

Rukia's feeling of fear quickly shriveled before her rage. Pupils shrank as her shivering jaw now gnashed with a visible flash of pearly whites. Swinging her Zanpakutou around, Rukia leaped up at the beast, her blade aimed at the mocking face.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Rukia shrieked out as she impaled the effigy of Kaien, straight between the eyes. The smile seemed almost permanent, as if no form of harm had been inflicted. As seconds would pass, the impulsive Shinigami would realize with a face contorting to disbelief that her attack was for naught.

The face, head, and body seemed to evaporate before her eyes. Bowing her head, she saw the entire colossal fiend seemed to evaporate into a wisp of dark hued mist. Even as she hung in the middle of the air she could only gape at what transpired.

"**You have that look of confusion again, Rukia**," A transparent, deep voice echoed all around her within the room. Somehow sensing her sudden look of apprehension and caution, the voice continued. "**I told you I have tens of thousands of Hollows granting me their unique powers. While the majority are nothing to boast of a select black sheep of the herd seem to possess useful ones I appreciate. This aspect is to turn one's body into the fabric of Reiatsu that imitates shadows and melds as one with them**."

Lowering herself down to the ground, Rukia held her Zanpakutou with both hands, her breath coming out in steady pants that perspired frosty mist. Ice formed around her hilt and bonded with her fingers, a steady snowfall manifesting around her almost as a instinctive field of Reiatsu.

"**I see what you're doing, Rukia**," The bodiless voice continued to echo all around her, unnerving the Shinigami further, "**You're lowering your core body's temperature so that you can feel the heat of my approach. This also in turn raises the efficiency of your Zanpakutou's attack power, making instantaneous freezing a much more easy feat. I know this because you revealed finite mechanics to me all those years ago, or need I remind you who helped you train to use that power?**"

"SHUT UP!" Rukia yelled out, turning around and around with her sword held up nearly above her head, ready to strike. "stop pilfering Kaien's memories! They aren't yours and you shouldn't act like you're him!"

"**Oh, but Rukia**..."

"Grk!" Rukia suddenly gurgled out, finding her throat suddenly gripped by a strong hand. A follow-up punch was made by his other limb, causing her mouth to gape out and project wads of spit. With her sword still raised, she would feel the arm stretch up and raise her in the air, ascending many feet up into the air.

"...I _am _him. You know what they say about you are what you eat, after all," Aaroniero chastised her with a decadent grin. This was emphasized through aforementioned point by dragging his tongue across his lips.

"B-Bas-ngh!" Rukia choked out, still unable to swing down her blade.

"Your body is too weak to maneuver effectively, not after lowering your core down to this level. Maybe you should have considered doing so for not such a long period of time without even combatting me? That probably would have worked," Aaroniero suggested with a mocking grin.

All the while he spoke several worm shaped limbs flowed up from the bubbling myre that was his lower body's flesh. They would wrap around Rukia's body, melting away the frost that covered her skin by mere contact, entwining all up her Shikhakushou up to her sword wielding arms to ensure she wouldn't use her Zanpakutou. In a matter of seconds she would be all but mostly wrapped by writhing dark flesh that pulsated like a slowly beating heart.

Rukia wrinkled her nose at the stench such putrid Hollow tissue made, her stomach already turning by being bound and touched by this abomination. Never had an Arrancar she had met before turned her insides around more than he.

It was only when she caught him staring at her with a less predatory look and more of a pensive expression. Using Kaien's face unnerved her further, making her almost yearn for the dead and gone man she loved so dearly. But at the same time it made her coil up in fear at what such a monster had planned.

"You're in a unique position, Rukia," Aaroniero confessed with a frank, level tone. "originally I had wanted to make you my pawn. You'd curry favor to Lord Aizen for me and allow my ambitions to be further realized with all of your friends dead."

Turning her around by the neck, examining her head and her bound body. To Rukia it'd be the humiliating fact that with the look in his eyes she would be no more than a piece of meat before a hungry beast. An intelligent beast, however, for he seemed to have a more eloquent taste than most Hollows as he continued to examine her visually.

"Eating you would be a waste," Aaroniero said with a nod of certainty, "you may possibly grant me some aspect of your powers and your Reiatsu, but it wouldn't further my goals in the slightest. My weaknesses as you've seen would be intact and I'd still be no closer to achieving any aims I have."

Pulling her closer, Aaroniero's eyes narrowed as a thin lipped smile spread widely across his face. A hint of greed glinted in his eyes as he looked her dead in the eyes, breathing a new wave of fear into her pores. Her shivering breaths would come out shaking being this close to the nightmare that waved the face of the beloved she slain herself. It did nothing but entice Aaroniero to continue explaining her fate.

"You and I are going to become one, in a sense I inadvertently had with Kaien Shiba," Aaroniero explained in a all-too gentle tone. "my shell, despite some advantages it has lent me in the past, is limited to environment and definitive errors in its design. No, I think a new form is required for my evolution to continue."

In that moment, Rukia's eyes widened with absolute fear. The insinuation and the way he spoke as he held her could only mean one thing. A squeaky choked gasp would be let out of her agape mouth before a desperate inhalation to relieve her strangled neck of more oxygen. That intake of air would be all the invitation required as a mouthful of body binding flesh crawled up her chin and dove into it forcefully.

"MMMMMMMNGH?!" The woman gurgled out in a muffled protest. Her body began writhing violently as hard as she could as the flesh ropes soon expanded into curtains. In a matter of seconds, her body would become mummified, sealing away the visibility her black linen and beige cloak endowed figure possessed. Even her sword would be consumed by a tub of vertically inclined tubular tendril meat.

"Let's see if you remember this sensation, Rukia," Aaroniero said with a delightfully carnal smile, "I know _I _do! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

It was then that everything just beneath her eyes would be forcefully invaded. The pores of her skin, the cut on her cheek, her very insides were penetrated and forced into her. The sensation would be the equivalent of lighting her nerves on fire and keeping them over the pit of which the flames originated from.

If a shrill shriek could be felt more than heard, now would be the moment that Rukia would remember feeling this form of Reiatsu. The last thing on her mind was that horrific Hollow that sealed her beloved's fate. The one that took the wife of Kaien away before she killed it and him as well.

"_Metastacia?!_"

After what seemed like an eternity of flesh imbuing itself into Rukia's body, all traces of Aaroniero's gigantic body would be lost. In its wake, a pair of tennis ball shaped skulls would spill out of a cracked jar filled with crimson transparent liquid. They would roll lifelessly and inert to their sides, with nothing left inside of them but emptiness.

Lowering to the ground in its place, however, was a dark humanoid shape covered in vile flesh. Soon the flesh would disappear entirely and would be left with an elegant, quaint female frame. An upper class frilly coat of noble wear flourished over the frame, organized in a manner that would fit her body perfectly with a high-up collar that framed her raven tressed head. White gloves wrapped around both hands, holding Sode no Shirayuki in a more nonchalant lowered manner. Violet eyes opened and blinked around her environment, glancing down at her own body and bestowed attire.

"So strange," She spoke, raising her left hand before her eyes, clenching and unclenching it experimentally, "is this how the body of a Shinigami truly feels? Fascinating."

Swinging her blade around a few times, she performed a few graceful pirouette maneuvers followed up with flips. After seemingly prancing around in the dark halls for a handful of minutes she allowed herself a small smile of revelling. A small compulsion of releasing her Reiatsu to test how large her Reiryoku had increased swept over her, but it was quickly silenced by the inner voice of reason.

"_I don't want everyone in Las Noches to know of what happened. At least, not yet_," She thought with a nod.

Looking towards the glimmer of light, cast by the hole Rukia had created by her Souren Soukatsui. Narrowing her eyes she inhaled deeply before exhaling slowly. With trepidation she walked towards the sunlight, her footsteps echoing the battle wrecked halls of his personal quarters. The only sound that she'd hear would be her breath and her footsteps as she approached the rays bathing a portion of the room with its brilliance.

Reaching out, she'd briefly retract her fingers. Closing her eyes she reached towards it once more, walking into it in a stumbling manner. What came wasn't a searing sensation or a sudden sapping of her vitality. Instead, for what felt like the first time in her life, it was a foreign sensation she never knew.

"Warmth?" She whispered aloud as she blinked her violet eyes open, turning her head towards the artificial star that glared down at the interior of Las Noches. While she turned her eyes away from seeing it, she looked around at her form and saw that it remained intact. More than that, it had no affect on her in the slightest, that much she could tell from sensation more than action.

"Hahahaha...HEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" She laughed in a tone of revelling and victory, hugging her sides as her form bowed forward. Fear had all but vanished from her core and now, as she was, she felt truly unstoppable. As she wiped her tears away from her laughter, she swung her sword to the side, sealing it in a single motion before sheathing it into its scabbard upon her hip.

"The light cannot keep a creature of darkness at bay any longer," She declared with a smile, raising her arms up in a declarative manner to the empty desert. Eyes narrowed with a predatory hunger as her pupils shrank and momentarily created a slit within her lavender orbs. "Aaroniero Arruruerie is reborn! The hunt for more prey begins now!"

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**A/N**: Wow, I went from writing a Dark 6th Chapter of Reap the Pain (if you're fans of that, you know what I'm taking about. If not, read Reap the Pain to know what I mean XD) to writing out this horrorfest.

This idea came literally through a conversation. The idea that Aaroniero could devour her and gain her powers, appearance, etc. and thus allow him to get even stronger than those up above him on the totem pole of the Espada.

While he never actually "devoured" Rukia in this Chapter, it was the next best thing. Imbuing his form and entire essence into her opens the door for a huge gateway of new possibilities. Capable of being so much more than simply a lab freakshow creation of Aizen's, he (now a She) is able to do much more as a Hollow/Shinigami.

Where will this lead? Who knows? Read more to find out -w-

Please leave Reviews containing your thoughts, what you'd like to see this series go, and what you liked or disliked. Constructive criticism is appreciated but I don't think negative commentary is helpful. Until then, the next Chapter should be released next week. Cya around~


	2. A LOVEless Encounter

**A Predator Among Us**

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A single moment and Aaroniero's presence, as the rest of the Espada would know it, vanished. During the subsequent moment an instantaneous feed of information would be fed into their minds, giving them each a vivid mental picture as to what happened. It would be almost as clear as Ulquiorra's ocular feed he employs when crushing one of his eyes.

"**Farewell, Espada!**"

_Rukia Kuchiki shouted aloud as she cut her Zanpakutou through Aaroniero's head-tank. Crimson liquid spilled out and sent the heads of Aaroniero rolling as the rest of his monolithic form dispersed into a knee deep pool of emerald juices. Those juices themselves would soon dissipate and evaporate into thin air , just as the weary and cut Shinigami would descend to the ground onto her hands and knees. _

_Looking over, the young female Shinigami would glare at the heads writhing in place over the scarlet hued juices. One was quite still and groaning. The other was considerably less so._

"**AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! THE PAIN! AIZEN PLEASE MAKE IT STOP! I CAN'T BEAR IT ANY LON-GRK?!**"

_After wailing for some time, the secondary head of Aaroniero was stabbed through the skull's temple. Gargling his final breaths, all that remained was the other head, visibly contorting a skeletal glare at Rukia. As Rukia walked over to him with sword raised, he'd chuckle out loud with a sign of resigning. _

"**To think you were able to best me. I was too careless to underestimate you...**"

_Without another word, Rukia cut him in a perfect bisecting half. This would create nothing but a blank screen of static for all those "tuning in" as it were. All would verify the last moments with the testifying signature of Rukia's Reiatsu still strong in the air while Aaroniero's wasn't. _

To the rest of the Espada, Aaroniero was dead.

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**The Raging Sea Palace, Upper Terrace**

"Shit!" Exclaimed Emilou Apacci, one of the three Tres Bestias. Her heterochromic eyes glared at the approximate direction she felt Aaroniero's Reiatsu disappear, in conjunction with the mental images she was shown. Gritting her teeth, she turned her head towards her superior's direction, whom was looking in an entirely different direction of the upper Palace's terrace.

"Lady Harribel!" Emilou shouted, "what should we do?!"

"Why are you bothering her, Emilou?" Franceska Mila Rose asked her companion. Her left brow raised scrupulously at Emilou, placing her left hand on a jutted out hip while waving her free hand in an emphasizing manner. "you do realize she's just as aware of this broadcast as we are right? If she wanted us to do something immediate, she would have told us so."

"I wasn't talking to you, fuckin' whore!" Emilou snarled, her face immediately invading Franceska's personal space to glare up at the taller Arrancar.

"Whatcha say, bitch?!" Franceska growled back, ramming her head against Emilou's forehead whom pressed it back with equal vigor. Both of them would be enamored with comedically bulging veins across their cheeks, further emphasizing their hotblooded nature.

"Please, stop shouting," Spoke Cyan Sung-Sun, the last and most feminine by appearance of the Tres Bestias, in a chastizing manner. "your voices, as well as your faces, are giving me more of a headache than they usually do. Please cut the unnecessary vulgarity down to a minimum you two harlots can handle."

"What's that?!" Emilou and Franceska shouted at once, their cheeks sliding against each other as they locked widened eyes incredulous rage at their comrade.

Cyan raised her left arm to cover her mouth below the bridge of her nose. Narrowing her eyes, she turned her head to glance at them from the side, "Are you two hard of hearing from your deafening shouts? Let me repeat it in a more eloquent manner. You two wretched sluts are a pain to listen to as much as it is to behold visually. I'd rather not hear you anymore than I see you so please. Shut. Up."

"DO YOU WANT TO DIE?!" Emilou and Franceska shouted with upraised hands. The prior cracking her knuckles while the latter clawed them at her sides. Both looked eager to pounce at their friend for verbally goading them.

"That's enough, you three," A calm, commanding voice came from their superior, Tier Harribel, the Tres Espada. Her body didn't shift or move despite the obvious order she made regarding her subordinates. Hearing them stop, she felt she could continue, "if you used your Pesquisa responsibly, you would feel other forces at work since Novena's passing."

"Other forces?" Emilou inquired, her eyes widened while Franceska's narrowed, Cyan remaining foremostly impassive.

The Espada grew silent upon them inquiring the nature of her words. A sigh escaped her collar-hidden mouth, eyes briefly closing then opening. "You'll see soon enough. All I ask of you is that you remain where you are so that you can see it properly."

"Yes, Milady," The Tres Bestias said as one, synchronizing their absolute loyalty to their Lady. All they did now was turn their bodies to walk over and stand next to their superior. In just a short few minutes, they would all but forget about their fellow Espada's death and keep their senses appraised to what Tier was waiting for.

They could only wonder what it could be...and why it captured her attention so vividly.

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**The Empty Crown Palace, Throne Room**

"Huh, so he got himself killed?"

Those were the words that escaped the Segundo Espada, Baraggan Louisenbairn's lips. He sat upon a bone-clad throne, leaning his left jaw against a clenched fist as he tapped his aged fingers on the right sided armrest. Within the ample lit room had no furnishing or decoration, only lined up with a dozen large Hollow skulls mounted on each one with various shapes to each.

"Stupid punk," Barragan huffed with irritation. "I would have killed you years ago, had it not been Aizen's meddling in keeping infighting down to a minimum. Your feast upon hundreds of my subordinates was going to incur my wrath sooner or later. Damn shame I wasn't the one to watch you wither to dust."

Closing his eyes, Barragan heaved a sigh, "I congratulate you, Shinigami, for slaying the piece of garbage that he was. For that, I won't have my subordinates hunt you down like the dogs you and your interloping colleagues are."

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**The Howling Wolf Palace, The Lobby Quarters**

"Staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrk!" Lilynette Gingerback called out with her hands cupped over her mouth. Walking through every hall and collosal proportioned room Aizen designed for such an esteemed Espada, she wondered if it was all really worth the trouble. Considering his nature, he wouldn't bother looking in most of them at all.

Walking past a tall doorspace, the lime haired Arrancar stopped dead in her tracks to see where the man in question was. A resoundingly loud chorus of snores echoed the confines of the room; a insignificant one with a small ceiling light and a door leading to the outside of the palace at the bottom of a walled off stairwell.

A mischievious look crossed her face as she spotted the sleep ridden companion of hers. Comedically, she tip-toed over towards Starrk's reclined frame, crossing the room's vast space in under half a minute. Seeing that an arm was looped over his eyes, she felt no problem would befall her master plan.

Using her right hand, she pointed downwards at the gaping mouth that continued to grate out snores. A sudden plunge of knuckles and an outstretched digit would befall the man, cutting off his air supply. After a handful of gurgles of waking protest were made, Lilynette quickly extracted her hand out of his mouth as a wide-eyed man began coughing and spluttering aghast with alarm.

"The Hell...?!" Starrk began to sputter out, his eyes drawing over to Lilynette's frame, "oh..."

"Heh," Lilynette grinned cheekily. She bowed her body to one angle, placing the back of her left hand against the jutting hip while using the right hand to be raised up into a peace sign. "yo, Starrk!"

"Uhhhhhhhh," Starrk groaned with weary eyes, his lips covered in drool and his brow beading a few drops of sweat. Turning promptly to face his back to his companion, he said aloud in a tired tone, "leave me alone and let me sleep..."

Bulging small veins covered Lilynette's face as her exposed eye open wide in an outraged manner. Forward flipping to face Starrk on the other side, Lilynette grabbed him by his shoulders and began stomping over his crotch, "GET UP! GET UP! GET UP! GET UP! GET UP! GET UP!"

"AH! STOP IT! NOT MY CROTCH!" Starrk barked out in pained retort.

After the beatings subsided, Lilynette knelt over the cushion prone Starrk. Her gaze looked curiously at the melancholic daze his eyes seemed to have, his mouth held in a semblance of a bored grimace. It didn't seem like he cared in the slightest for what had just happened.

"Aren't you," Lilynette cocked her head slightly to the left, trying to catch Starrk's eyes, "even a little bothered by what's happened?"

"What do you expect me to do about it," Starrk asked without turning his head, "he's dead. Me hunting down the Shinigami who killed him won't change that. 'Sides, I don't think Aizen wants us all hording in on the intruders, given what happened in that meeting with Grimmjow-"

"You're still afraid," Lilynette interrupted, causing Starrk to halt his speech but not turn his wall-locked stare. Lilynette took a sit over his chest, her palms still resting over his shoulders as she examined him with her pink eye. "you're afraid of...getting close to your comrades, aren't you?"

"How many have we seen become brittle and die before our eyes, Lily?" Starrk asked, coining the nickname for her when he was being serious. Turning his gaze to hauntingly look up with a emptiness that she knew all too well. The sight of sadness that none of the Espada would ever fulfill.

"Is that why, you coop yourself up in here, away from everybody else?" Lilynette asked as her eyes were drawn down to the Arrancar's Hollow hole. Looking through it, she could see the darkened silhouette of the cushions he laid upon. In a metaphorical sense, she could also see the bottomless pit that depression couldn't be alleviated. "is that why, you only let me go out and talk with the others?"

"Of the two of us, it's better if I don't mingle with the others," Starrk admitted in a lower tone, "after all, between the two of us, my Reiatsu is much higher than yours. It's better this way."

"I see," Lilynette bowed her head, closing her eye as she let out a small sigh, "alright. I guess we do nothing, as usual."

"That's the plan, Lilynette," Starrk answered as he slouched an arm over his eyes, renewing his slumber, "not until Lord Aizen says otherwise..."

* * *

**The Seer Palace, Meditation Chambers**

Zommari's eyes opened wide. The transmission that just reached him upon his comrade's death disturbed him to no end. One of the Shinigami interloping Hueco Mundo, penetrating the defenses of Las Noches, had fought and killed an Espada singlehandedly. The one known as...

"_Rukia Kuchiki, hm?_" Zommari narrowed his eyes, his mind's eye locking onto the stoically hardened face. Her cold eyes glaring down at Aaroniero with not but spite and outrage. Her strikes upon Aaroniero's two heads were ruthless and calculated, not leaving any room for error.

"The Last of the First Generation Espada falls to your blade," Zommari spoke aloud as he kept his meditative stance, both palms pointed upwards with his sword lying in front of him in its sheathe. Breathing in and out through his nostrils, the Espada continued to contemplate the situation. He could feel the faint traces of the gradual regression of Reiatsu that was the killer's.

After what seemed like a few minutes of further meditation, Zommari's person seemed to evaporate, his sword disappearing in tandem. His feet would tap simultaneously near the exit of his meditative space, the scabbard in his left hand held just below the spiked disc guard. In the seconds that followed his performance of high speed movement, Zommari would finish his new initiative aloud in the empty hallowed halls of his Palace, making purposefully slow strides emptying the room.

"It shall be by my blade that you die, Shinigami!"

* * *

**The Debaucherous Palace, Main Hall**

"MASTER SZAYELOPPORO! MASTER SZAYELOPPORO!" Two bulbous egg shaped Arrancar shouted as they bounced towards their master. One bore hair while the other lacked any, making that their only distinctive character traits to tell them apart.

"AARONIERO IS DEAD!"

"SHINIGAMI KILLED HIM!"

"KILLED BY A SHINIGAMI AARONIERO ARRURUERIE WAS!"

"Oh?" Szayel turned his head casually to examine his Fraccion tell him the news. Placing his right forefingers to his temple, he himself began examining the mental images that were broadcast to him. A look of understanding crossed his face as he nodded with verbal affirmation, "it's true. It seems Aaroniero was finally done in by someone. Quite a messy end he ha...hmmm?"

Narrowing his eyes, his words drifted off to silence as he noticed something else. A secondary set of senses beyond his Pesquisa detecting Reiatsu and the Synchronized Cognition that projected the events that transpired minutes before death. An additional set of sensors only he himself had designed and placed on a particular place to aid him of observing those of the Espada ranks.

"Intriguing," Szayel said with a thin smile.

"W-What...the Hell...are you talking about?!"

"Hmmm?" Szayel turned to examine his opponent. With his desert cloak torn and his Shikhakushou ragged around the edges, obvious signs of bruising and cuts were seen from the various bouts of Cat & Mouse had between the two. All things considered, he looked miserable for fighting an opponent of his stature.

Waving his hand dismissively, he tapped his sword's edge upon the ground below in a casual manner, "Are you losing the ability to understand words? I obviously confirmed that a comrade of mine, the Novena Espada, was slain by one of your comrades. You shouldn't wear such a barbarically incredulous expression. I am congratulating your comrade after all."

"That's not it," Renji said with a heaved growl, eyes narrowing sharply at him, "something's wrong, isn't it?! What's going on out there?"

Pushing up the rim of his glasses with his spare hand, Szayel spread a toothy grin, "I don't feel inclined to spoil that."

"ANSWER ME!"

"Or what?" Szayel inquired with amused, half mast eyes.

A sudden dramatic swing of his sword by Renji, blocked instinctively by the back of the Arrancar's hand, the one wielding the sword. Such a display was more of a scoffing gesture at how petty a maneuver was. This would be further emboldened by the amused expression passively worn upon his face.

"I calculated you'd do something like that," Szayel said with a lower tone. "it's all in vain. Even a ridiculous monkey like you should realize by now. A Shikai of your level cannot harm an Espa-"

A sudden fluctuation of crimson-hued Reiatsu would be felt, causing the Espada's eyes to briefly flare open wide at the sensation. Moments later a violent explosion would be had along the edge of the contacted blade, leaving a wafting bath of steam and smoke to surround the standing Espada.

"If you're not going to give me straight answers, then I'm done fighting you!" Renji snarled aloud, pupils shrunken and mouth open agape with bared teeth of indignant frustration. "now move!"

"Tsk-tsk-tsk," Szayel breathed out as the steam revealed a small cut made above his right brow, "such a stubborn one you are. Allow me to educate you on the definition of futility, Shinigami."

* * *

**Palace of the Fallen Blades, Outermost Corridor**

"This Reiatsu...!" Ichigo gasped sharply, his sandal feet skidding to a halt in the middle of a pillar laden hall. Looking around he could feel it, faintly spiking just before fading upon the recesses of his senses. It came from what felt like a good distance away from the Palace he was still navagating and it belonged to someone he knew.

"...belongs to Rukia Kuchiki," A voice from the top of the stairwell finished, attracting Ichigo's gaze up. There, with hands pocketed in the folds of his hakama, was the pale skinned vampiric Arrancar. Stepping down purposefully with each step he looked down and scrutinized the pair of individuals beneath his gaze. His Reiatsu, unlike that of Grimmjow's, seemed so much more composed and controlled. To someone like Ichigo, it was impossible to gauge just how strong he was.

Reaching the middle of the stairwell, he halted to stare impassively at Ichigo, "That was what you were going to say, wasn't it?"

"You're," Ichigo began, his eyes widened as much as the child Arrancar Nel's was, "Ulquiorra!"

"You say that name, yet I don't remember giving it to you," Ulquiorra said frankly, the tone curt enough to sound insulted at Ichigo saying it so freely. Unwilling to descend further from the staircase, the Arrancar sighed with a purposeful closing of his eyes. "no matter. Allow me to enlighten you on what you haven't figured out yet. Rukia Kuchiki has just slain the Novena Espada, Aaroniero Arrurerie."

"What?!" Ichigo gasped aloud.

"Apparently, while you and your comrades were busy fighting the Privaron Espada, Rukia encountered the Ninth ranked of the Espada. You should feel proud of that accomplishment, even if it is a futile one," Ulquiorra reopened his eyes to glare down at Ichigo pointedly. "there are still nine other Espada, including myself, before you even reach Lord Aizen. The reality is that because of Rukia's victory, she will become prey for the other Espada, one way or another."

Hearing this caused the Substitute's expression to quickly change into a visage of alarm instead of relief. Turning on his heels, Ichigo began to dash from the stairwell towards the end of the hall, intending to exit the palace as soon as possible.

"Aren't you going to fight me?" Ulquiorra called out from his perch.

Hearing his voice, Ichigo felt disinclined to continue, only taking a moment to look over his shoulder up at the white garbed Arrancar, "As far as I know, you haven't done anything personal against me or my comrades. I don't have any reason to fight you, at least right now."

"I see," Ulquiorra narrowed his eyes, "so if I told you the reason that Orihime Inoue came to Las Noches was because of me, would you still think otherwise?"

The sound of thunder followed by a flash of light would be the answer made by the Substitute. With Zangetsu held aloft to the side, steaming from the release of excess discharge of Reishi, Ichigo's vehement glare fixated upon the localized explosion of his rapidly fired technique. When the steam would dim, it would reveal Ulquiorra's silhouette and the staircase itself. A large gouge would be carved into the infrastructure of the stairwell, only halting just around the point where the Espada stood. He'd appear unscathed, with an upraised right forearm that appeared to have taken the brunt of the attack.

"Bastard! You're the reason Orihime was called a traitor!" Ichigo snarled aloud, swinging his blade in his direction in a proclaiming manner. "do you realize what you've done?!"

"Found a reason to fight me yet?" Ulquiorra inquired rhetorically, goading him with his stoically dispassionate posture, entirely ignoring Ichigo's question.

"Yeah, I have!" Ichigo said with a hardened expression. Setting down Nel next to his feet, he gestured with his free hand. "stand back, Nel. Just like last time."

"Ichigo...?" Nel quietly quivered up at her orange-haired friend and protector.

"Don't worry about me," Ichigo said with a smile, returning his gaze back to Ulquiorra whom just stared down at him with mild curiosity, "he doesn't seem to want to budge. I'm not going to mess around..."

Clasping his hand over his right arm, he could hear a mild squeak and quick scampering of little limbs to escape what was to come. Leaping up into the air, Ichigo would shout loudly as he'd bring his sword above his head, the blade already becoming enshrouded by a veil of dense Reiatsu. "...I'm going full power from the start!"

From the moment Ichigo shouted, Ulquiorra's attention was singularly fixated upon him. A twister of crimson outlined black Reishi cycloned in the air of the high ceiling within the hall. The ground shook and the air quaked with the intensifying Reiatsu, rising higher and higher. Narrowing his green eyes at the whirlwind of climaxing power, he'd breathe out in an expectant sigh, "Bankai again?"

Then, the typhoon of Reishi dispersed. As the shockwave of bristling winds lapped over the Espada's garments, something appeared out of the steaming air currents high above his head. Wreathed in a longer and more elegant kosode, Ichigo's Shikhakushou transformed into a more sleek appearance, composed of black and red silk. Bodily clinging to the Shinigami, the attire seemed to be a mass of Reishi, a power cloak of sorts to display the sheer amount of Reiryoku he possessed. The black sword itself was hyper compressed Reishi, and to his eyes, seemed to be a very durable weapon.

But then something clashed with the elegance and smooth features of Ichigo's Bankai. A white alabaster mask, crafted of plaster and bone clung to his face. With red painted lines etched onto the left side, golden eyes glared through angled eye holes, mirroring the menace the visible rows of teeth laid bare and clung together. Combined with his Bankai, his assimilation of Reishi wasn't just Shinigami but also...

"_...Hollow Reiryoku?!_" Ulquiorra thought with widened eyes of shock.

In that moment of shock, Ichigo had incidentally chose to strike. His body blurred forth with a speed that hadn't been displayed in his fight with Yammy or even his second confrontation with Grimmjow. Like a wraith of black with a face of white and red, Ichigo's form appeared with a leap of Reishi propulsion, leaving a elliptical shockwave from where he formerly had hovered high within the ceiling vista. Thrusting his sword forth, it would barely be blocked by the back of Ulquiorra's unpocketed left hand, partially embedding its tip into the pale flesh.

"Ngh?!" Ulquiorra grimaced visibly, finding the very foundation he stood upon collapsed within a wave of black-red Reiatsu. With the staircase collapsed, his feet pressed against the air reflexively, projecting Reishi particles from the bottom of his feet to keep from falling outright along with the debris turned stairs.

"_What kind of Reiatsu is this?!_" Ulquiorra thought with bafflement, his eyes drawn to the sword that hungered for more of his hand's flesh. Employing his own Reiatsu through his Hierro, he kept the offending penetrating object from pushing further. The fact that he had to focus in order to keep from being injured was ludicrous in the Arrancar's mind.

All of the immediate attention he placed into the blade's edge kept him from noticing the silhouette of a trespassing limb. Arcing forward, Ichigo's hand suddenly grappled Ulquiorra's face, covering the left half with his palm while his thumb wrapped around the bridge of his nose and his forefinger curved around his left brow. The slap of flesh and pressure behind Ichigo's arm strength was enough to make the Arrancar bow back half a foot, still reeling from shock at the situation.

"**_I don't have time for your games, Ulquiorra!_**" Ichigo snarled aloud, his Hollowfied voice magnifying the sheer menace of his newfound Visored form before the Arrancar's eyes.

To punctuate his words, a bright crimson light shined blindingly over Ulquiorra's face, expanding till it was equal to his own head in mass. The mighty thrum that echoed the hall's space and rattled his skull caused his mind to query a numbing question he never conceived this enemy to possess.

_"A...Cero?!_"

A deafening shriek would sound as Ulquiorra's entire body be consumed in a fiery blast of crimson Reishi. The spirit particles would throttle his person through pillar after pillar, smashing the reinforced columns into fragmented bits, just short of the columns themselves toppling downwards. Just short of striking the wall, the Arrancar would clench his fingers into a fist and give the Cero a high powered punch. The result would redirect its current away to bowl over a number of other pillars, reducing a large portion of the wall into oblivion with a mighty explosion.

"_His Reiryoku and Reiatsu. If I didn't believe my eyes, it's almost as if I'm fighting an Arrancar instead of a Shiniga-_" Ulquiorra trailed off upon seeing a dark silhouette expand over him from above. As his emerald eyes looked up with renewed alarm, his mouth parted briefly to emit a gasp. Black and red Reishi currents of a colossal height trailed from a overhead raised black blade, held by both hands in the process of swinging it downwards. Unveiling his right hand upon instinct, the Espada crossed both arms over his head, knowing the momentum the Cero had created inhibited him from dodging.

Reishi coated blade would meet both arms. A shower of sparks would momentarily sprout forth, complemented by a elliptical shockwave that crushed and toppled more support pillars. The clash between both mutual Reiatsus was great enough to cause cracks within the overhead ceiling, webbing out and crumbling from the force placed upon its physical integrity. The struggle was taking a toll on the very battlefield they initiated this fight within.

"**_RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!_**" A Hollow roar from splitted skeletal teeth of Ichigo's mask, and he'd push his blade completely downwards, creating a thin veil of black-red Reiatsu to propel the Arrancar himself downwards into the ground below him. Visible tears across Ulquiorra's sleeves would be seen by his attacker, with even thinner lacerations made over his forearms by the very weapon he used to thrust him downwards.

"_I'm being overpowered?!_" A breath of air escaped Ulquiorra's lungs as those thoughts came to the surface. His back slapped hard against the ground, cracking and indenting the tiled flooring, creating an uproar of debris and plaster smoke. He'd find his body sprawled and half buried within the rubble, a look of incomprehension crossing his normally assured and stoic visage. "_I've severely underestimated this human. His powers have grown far greater than my original estimates of him back in the World of the Living!_"

The sensation of a high pressured kick would be felt on Ulquiorra's chest, catching him once again by surprise. Blowing back any detritus from his floor segmented form, it would further destroy the tiled landscape, tentatively staying above the next floor down from where they stood. With the ceiling barely holding together as well, Ichigo's next move -Ulquiorra surmised- would surely topple this part of the hall completely.

"**_GETSUGA,_**" Ichigo enunciated in a guttural tone, swinging his crimson black outlined mass of Reishi down in a pendulum strike, aiming to collide it where Ulquiorra's Hollow hole resided, "**_TENSHOU!_**"

And just like that, everything came crashing down. Within the wake of the massive black arc of Reiatsu employed Reishi, the crescent shaped blaze would encompass the floor underneath Ichigo's feet and send Ulquiorra plummeting downwards. Creating a perfect bisection of the floor before and ahead of him, the hall all but collapsed with a shower of concrete and sulfur, the ceiling itself raining down with parts of the wall with it. It would join floor after floor, as the sound of the seemingly endless descent of Ulquiorra and Ichigo's ultimate and currently only technique would seem to fade away like dying thunder.

Staring downwards, Ichigo began to heave with exertion. Bits of his mask began to crumble and collapse down to join the dark hole that his attack created. As the final parts of his Hollow shards fell downwards, a bright crimson light would be seen below, followed by an uproaring plume of flames that rose all the way up in front of the Shinigami's hovering frame. While he flinched at its rise, he the lack of sensing Ulquiorra's immediate return gave him a sense of relief and success.

Lowering his blade, he turned around and kicked off the air towards the only part of the hall that he had been heading to that was still intact. Dropping by a cracked pillar, Ichigo placed his free hand on it and glanced down at the trembling Nel, smiling at her, "You alright?"

"D-D-Dat was quasy Itsygo!" Nel sputtered out loud. Hobbling up to her feet, she grasped at Ichigo's black clothed skirt, staring up at him with wide unbelieving eyes, "using all dat powa at once! Your bwody bein' hurt all up! Why you so weckwess?!"

Ichigo's eyes were wide with surprise as the usually upbeat and positive Nel dissolved her rants into heavy sobs. His tender smile would return as he bent down at rubbed her masked head, trying to reassure the best way he could. "Hey, what's with all the tears? I'm okay now, alright? I wasn't even touched in that battle."

"A-A-Are you shur?" She asked with quivering lips, sniffling comically with large eyes.

"Yeah, just a little winded. Never had to use that much Hollowfied power all at once in my Getsuga Tenshou. Not to mention the Cero," Ichigo explained readily away, waving nonchalantly as he stood tall. "but it's okay now."

The succinct buzzing of a Sonido would counter Ichigo's very words. Turning slowly with heavy trepidation, Ichigo saw with quickly increasing dread the state his enemy was in. Scorch marks seemed to cover the majority of his uniform, the fabric of his kosode's shoulders and chest seemed to have a number of holes where the burns were the greatest. A single line seemed to be no wider than a hair cut down Ulquiorra's chest, sporting no blood other than wafting trails of steam and an angry purple bruise. Other than that, the massive explosion and point blank release of his Getsuga Tenshou seemed to have no desirable effect.

"Was that it?" Ulquiorra asked, his voice no longer holding any form of amusement. "that technique you just used now was far more powerful than that Cero you used before. You even managed to work past my guard and overpower me when I was off balance. But, if this is the best you can do, I only have one word to summarize the totality of your strength..."

Punctuating these words with a purposefully slow rise of his right hand, a single index finger pointed at Ichigo's direction as his stoic gaze seemed to double as a glare, "**Disappointing**."

At that instant, no audible or visible sign of priming could be witnessed before Ichigo's eyes as a voluminous mass of emerald Reishi discharged from Ulquiorra's fingertip. Only thanks to Ichigo's hyper awareness within his Bankai was he able to turn his head and note that Nel was still beside him. Without hesitation, his hand swung over his face the same moment his body crouched down and wrapped his sword wielding arm around Nel. Taking the full brunt of the attack, Ichigo felt nothing but a wave of searing pain overlap his body and rip apart what little durability his Bankai's attire possessed.

As his ears rang, he leaped out of the hole the Cero had created. Tumbling down to land on the sand below, Ichigo gasped raspily, glancing up at the hole from which his nemesis created. Without hesitating, the burned and bleeding Shinigami took off in a full on sprint, aiming to get as far away from the battlefield as possible.

"Nel! Are you alright?!" Ichigo yelled in panicked inquiry. Feeling no movement, let alone a response, Ichigo quickly became alarmed. The force of the shockwave he couldn't deflect with his body he could only conclude that it rattled her enough into unconsciousness.

"Stay with me, Nel! I'll get us out of he-!" Ichigo tried to reassure the toddler under his arms, till what came out of the corner of his eye gave him pause. Gaping with disbelief, he saw Ulquiorra easily overtaking Ichigo, matching him step for step in a sprint visibly more casual than his.

A sudden whirl of white-hued movement and a sand-ridden explosion would be sounded. While Ichigo's form would be whirling in a pinwheeling manner towards one of the towers, Ulquiorra's leg just now began to become visible, dipping down to the ground to signify the end of his kick. Following the tap of his sole onto the sand below, a distant shattering of infrastructure was heard as Ichigo's body spiraled into the interior of the spyre the Arrancar punted him into.

Through a quick employment of Sonido, Ulquiorra appeared before the Shinigami, heaving and bleeding heavily. Narrowing his eyes, the Espada re-pocketed his hands into the folds of his hakama, walking casually towards the downed opponent with little regard, "You used that strange mask to shield yourself from my Cero? An impressive testament to your Bankai's hyper speed. However, this time it shattered, perhaps easier than the first time you donned it. You're at the limits of your strength, human. It's over."

What the Arrancar expected next was the eventual collapse of such a wounded body or the pained resignation of a beaten warrior. He hardly perceived him thrusting his sword suddenly into his upper left pectoral, cutting straight through the cloth of his burnt kosode and impacting into his reinforced skin. The Shinigamified Hollow looked down incredulously at the offending weapon, shortly before looking onto the wielder.

"Who...the fuck...would surrender...to you?!" Ichigo snarled exhaustedly at his enemy, the light in his eyes far from burned out. A smile seemed to stretch across his face, a sound and look of confidence building up behind his visage as he spoke, "you're the top Espada, aren't ya?! So if I kill you, that's the same as declaring my victory over all the others!"

"Is that so?" Ulquiorra inquired rhetorically, his left hand wrapping easily around the black blade that pushed against his chest. Applying a miniscule amount of force to coerce it away from his body, he angled it so that he'd push aside the remains of the left flank of his kosode top. Seeing the look of confusion grow quickly across the Shinigami's face was enough to give Ulquiorra a form of content, "unfortunately for you, that foolish assumption is incorrect."

What Ichigo saw was mind-boggling. An italic tattoo in the shape of the number four appeared over the left pectoral muscle, "Th-Th-The Fourth?!"

"Correct," Ulquiorra said blankly, "I am Ulquiorra Schiffer, Cuatro Espada. In terms of strength, skill, and abilities I am the fourth strongest of the Espada."

"N-No way," Ichigo gulped and breathed heavily with disbelief. Any further breathing halted with the immediate intrusion of a knife-hand thrust of Ulquiorra's right hand. Looking down at the set of digits buried into his torso, he felt pain and confusion flood his mind, only able to hear the slow beats of his heart echo every last word Ulquiorra spoke to him.

"Ichigo Kurosaki," Ulquiorra began, "you have no hope of defeating me. Even if you were to defeat me, you'd have to go through four others to reach me. After that, there is three others above me in terms of powers and abilities. Try as you might, facing me in battle one thousand times over will provide nothing but defeat. Your quest to save Orihime Inoue..."

Withdrawing his hand, a shower of blood would be seen, shortly following a deadly silent fall of Ichigo's body onto the cold floor.

"...is over."

* * *

**Chapter 2 - A **LOVE**less Encounter**

**A Few Minutes Ago...**

"Everything should be in place," Aaroniero said to herself, finishing the final touches of evidence to back up her proclaimed demise. Having grabbed spare robes from one of the interior hidden closet spaces within her domain, she placed it accordingly in a way that would mimic the aspect of her body's fall right over sampled blood of her own prior to attaining her new body. She even cut her old body's skulls in a manner that would dictate accurately what she falsely sent to the rest of her comrades.

"_With irrefutable evidence left here, I should be able to move freely without too much suspicion_," The Espada in disguise thought with a stoic nod. Placing a hand over the bound collar of her beige desert robe over her Shinigami Shikhakushou, she grimaced visibly. "_as much as I revolt wearing their uniforms, I can't use my own for surely raising unneeded questions_."

Turning on her heels, she exited the shadowy lair of hers and entered the world of light. Leaping out of the hole, her body free falled down, gently landing in a crouch. Standing upright she allowed herself to inhale deeply and exhale.

"There's an abundance of Reiatsu signatures," Aaroniero noted verbally. She turned her head left to right, feeling a number of them colliding as much as there were those remaining active or on the move. After a few moments of thought, Aaroniero placed both sets of forefingers to either of her temples and closed her eyes. "time to engage my **Busqueda la Mente**!"

An ominous silence would take place as a invisible pulse would be sent out from Aaroniero's mind. Visible images began to appear within Aaroniero's mind, detailing the exact location, position and permeating power coming off each signature. Even the most subdued sources would be within Aaroniero's perception, all culminating in a large net of information that he'd use to track each signature and discern his next move.

"_Aizen is located within the _**White Citadel **_at the heart of Las Noches. I can feel him and his two Lieutenants along with Wonderweiss still located inside. It doesn't appear they're moving_," Aaroniero noted with a relaxed sigh escaping her nostrils. She'd continue her assessment as she'd furrow her brows. "Renji Abarai is currently combatting Szayelopporo in his Palace. A number of Arrancar including Uryu Ishida are also within his vicinity. I doubt they're going to leave that place intact, knowing their techniques have undoubtedly increased.

"_Tier's remaining alert but doesn't seem to be intending on moving, her and her Tres Bestias. Same thing goes for Starrk and Lilynette. Barragan and his own Fraccion too. Nnoitra seems to be a good deal away as well_," She continued dictating as she came across their presences, her brows slowly unfurling into one of satisfaction. However, they tightened when she felt familiar presences that unnerved her. "_Ulquiorra seems to be fighting, no, beating Ichigo Kurosaki just outside of the _**Privaron Palace**. _He'll surely be slain by someone of his caliber. Grimmjow is surprisingly elusive with his own actions. It's like he's heading in the opposite direction, though I'm not sure where. I cannot pinpoint Nnoitra's direction of path as rational, he seems to be just drawn to the large Reiatsus in Las Noches, a primal instinct on his part. Now I should look for_-"

Eyes widened as Aaroniero found two signatures, recognizable by her alone. Clenching her eyes closed once more, she focused on their signatures once more, finding them to be at the opposite end of the Privaron Palace. A delighted smile, too carnal for the likes of Rukia, stretched across Aaroniero's face at the catch she found.

"_Zommari's on the move here, most likely intent on finishing_ my _killer off_," Aaroniero thought with a bemusing chuckle, rising up from her crouched stance. "_It'll be hard to throw him off my trail, given I used _**Cognition Synchronization **_to detail the supposed end of Rukia and I's fight. I'll just intend to finish my business quickly before he arrives._"

With plan enacted, Aaroniero kicked off the sand and disappeared with a rapidly deployed Shunpo. Her figure disappearing in a blur of high speed movement, she'd leave behind the battle that marked her next stage of evolution and the demise of one of Las Noches' intruders.

* * *

"Found you!" Aaroniero exclaimed as she landed softly near the bodies of two individuals. Blood, still moist, soaked the pale grains they lied upon only a dozen meters apart from each other. Despite their very still appearances, she could tell they were both alive through some miracle or force of will.

Approaching the first, Aaroniero would kneel just above the orange afro head of the defeated Arrancar.

"Gantenbainne Mosqueda," Aaroniero said in a low tone, her eyes drawing to a half mast as she regarded the Shinigamified Hollow. "you were a natural Arrancar, and one of the few to retain his placement as part of Aizen's initial selection of Espada. As _Séptima _Espada, your only flaw is that you prided your personal strength rather than acknowledge your enemy's skills. Zommari's replacement of you was inevitable and your defeat at the hands of a human only cemented your failed status."

Placing her left hand over his face, Aaroniero would then finish with widened eyes of cold detachment, "At least know your power will be better served at my own possession!"

What would take place was horrific to any beholder. Her hand transformed into a five prong tendril with a hungry maw at its center. Squelching forth in a subdued shower of brain matter and flesh would be consumed as the gluttonous secondary tube dug into the skull of the unconscious Arrancar. Seconds later, a powerful suction of Reishi absorption -similar to Gonzui- would be felt, tearing apart the spiritual body of Gantenbainne. All of the tissue, blood, and aesthetic remains would be funneled into the maw, sending visible bulging contortion up the arm and into Aaroniero's gullet.

In less than half a minute, Aaroniero would have devoured the entirety of Gantenbainne. His essence absorbed now fully assimilated into her being.

"In the grand scheme of things, your Reiatsu isn't as impressive as the other high ranking Espada," Aaroniero commented to herself, examining her tendril hand revert back into its dainty feminine form. "but you have gotten stronger since I last saw you. Perhaps you were around Yammy's level, prior to his released state anyways. Hardly matters, really. What's yours is mine now."

Rising to her feet, she turned around to examine the other fallen man. Narrowing her eyes she could feel the faint amount of Reiatsu clinging to his body, somehow attracting the Reishi around him to pour into his wounds. Widening her eyes it just dawned to her that even with Rukia's knowledge of this man she didn't know what this man was until just now.

_"Sado Yasutora has Hollow powers?!_" Aaroniero thought with widened eyes of surprise.

"I've finally found you," The words suddenly rattled Aaroniero's ears as instantly as the buzzing of Sonido nary a few meters behind her. Operating purely on instinct she dashed to her left using a rush of Shunpo, avoiding the downward slash that created a fissure of bisecting force accompanied with a singular shout. "Shinigami!"

A shower of sand would begin to rain downwards as Aaroniero thumbed her sword out of its scabbard lock. Adjusting her eyes she'd see the silhouette of a rather big Arrancar, someone easily a head foot taller than even Ichigo. As the dust would settle, a mandarin coat would be tightly fitted to his muscular frame, leading down to a standard hakama and a pair of martial artist sandals fitted to his bare feet.

"_Zommari!_" Aaroniero thought internally with a visible scowl, unsheathing her sword in a purposely slow manner. "_He found me quicker than I would have liked..._"

"You move well, Rukia Kuchiki," Zommari noted calmly, turning to face his enemy with sword in hand. Raising the blade to be level with his own shoulder, Zommari's posture remained upright and composed. Nothing seemed to be able to rattle him outwardly as his only goal lied before his eyes. "perhaps your boast of holding back against Aaroniero wasn't totally without some truth. His methods were always some of the most underhanded of the Espada."

"Is that a fact?" Aaroniero inquired sharply, her eyes glaring back at Zommari as she raised her blade with both hands on its grip. "and you're a fair player?"

"Not..." Aaroniero would begin to hear, suddenly feeling the rushed sensation as much as she would see the rapid high speed movement performed by the Arrancar. Spinning upon the balls of her feet, she would parry a thrust towards her back, sending a vast array of sparks to flourish between her and the Espada. During the parry, she would flip backwards, landing a snap kick with her right foot to his chin.

"...Entirely!" She would hear upon landing on the ground, his body seemingly appearing to her left, already slashing diagonally downwards towards her neck.

"**Hadou #33**," Aaroniero began to mutter upon swinging to parry Zommari's sword swing, causing a shower of sparks from the collision. The color of the orange sparks shifted dramatically to a luminous azure shine emanating from her blade. It would only be the sudden realization cast from Zommari's eyes face just before the blade itself would cut through his own, releasing a monstrous gale of fiery blue energy into his body. "**Soukatsui!**"

As the wafting flames of searing Kidou would peter away into the horizon, Aaroniero would hear the sudden buzzes of Sonidos. Followed up would be four bodies identical to Zommari, charging towards her with thrusting blades aimed at ever angle possible.

"_Gemelos Sonído!_" Aaroniero thought with realization, eyes scowling around at the four Zommaris, all of which had their swords thrusting at her direction.

"It's over!" Zommari declared openly through all four mouths. It was during the fraction of time their blades took to reach Aaroniero's personal space that it would give her time to respond accordingly. She swung her blade, all the while crouching as low as she could to avoid the collision of blades above her head that took a few flecks of hair off the top.

"_Some no Mai_," She spoke lowly to herself, "**Tsukishiro!**"

An instant later, the ground would glow a bright circle of white light. Following up with a leap via Shunpo an ice pillar would be erected in place over the sandy ground where all four Zommaris stood. Seconds later the ice would shatter, along with the visages of Sonido Clones residing from within.

"Impressive," Zommari would voice aloud, his body buzzing half a dozen meters behind Aaroniero, causing her to slowly turn to face him as he spoke, "to have the skill to see through my Gemelos Sonído and react accordingly without a hint of hesitation is astounding for someone of your level. You're a lot stronger than I gave you credit for, Shinigami."

"I don't intend on giving you the same advantage I gave him," Aaroniero proclaimed stoically, raising her beautiful Shikai to bear, holding it at an inverted angle parallel to her right cheek. "I assume you're an Espada?"

"Indeed," Zommari nodded his head. Grasping the collarless top of his top, he stretched it down to reveal the top of his left pectoral muscle. There, a distinct black tattoo numbered as seven would be seen. "I'm the Séptima Espada, Zommari Rureaux."

"Since you already know my name, I see no point in my own introduction," Aaroniero responded with narrowed eyes. Taking time in the staredown to comprehend his options, Aaroniero began to ponder. "_Zommari is a skilled opponent when it comes to Zanjutsu and the Hohou Arts. Dragging a battle out here my draw some unwanted attention from the wandering Espada. I rather finish this quickly so I may conclude my _business _here_."

Raising his blade in a goading manner, Zommari noticed that his opponent had yet to make the first move to renew their battle. "What's the matter, Kuchiki? Are you not going to make your move?"

"I'm just thinking," Aaroniero responded curtly.

"Oh?" Zommari inquired, visibly curious yet still very much composed.

"If you're two ranks above the last Espada I killed, why do you seem weaker in comparison?" She questioned, her expression eliciting a goading smile.

"Please," Zommari glared vividly at his target, "don't compare me to the bottom of the totem pole. Aaroniero may have been a crafty opponent and perhaps a bit more Reiryoku than I or the Octava Espada do. But there is one reason why Lord Aizen placed me above the other two."

"Do tell," Aaroniero further jabbed, looking obviously unimpressed, even while in a prepared posture.

"The special ability that lies within my released form," Zommari revealed with a matter-of-fact, if not outright prideful tone. Crouching down, the Arrancar aligned his blade to be horizontal to his upper torso. Slowly releasing his fingers from the Zanpakutou's hilt, the Arrancar placed his hands up in a meditative stance, with palms upright and forefingers touching.

Just short of clapping his hands together, Zommari would hear an opposing shout from his enemy.

"**Sai!**"

"What?!" Zommari exclaimed with shock, finding his hands narrowly halted from clapping together. The binding energy cast upon him was magnetically drawn towards his back, aiming to physically restrain his two limbs. Scoffing incredulously, Zommari began to press his palms together, "you think you can halt my actions with such a puny spell?!"

"**Bakudo #4, Hainawa!**" Aaroniero would follow up with a sudden follow-up swipe of her arm, discharging a serpentine flowing golden rope of energy that would entwine around Zommari's wrists all the way up to his shoulders. The binding energy, further reinforced by Sai, would effectively immobilize Zommari's arms.

"Are you that afraid of my Ressureccion, Shinigami?!" Zommari inquired brazenly, visibly struggling to rip the Kidou using sheer force.

However, he would fail to get the chance.

Faster than Zommari had witnessed the Shinigami moving prior, Aaroniero would thrust her white blade straight into his right pectoral. The Arrancar could only gape at how the edge had specifically targeted his Hollow hole, straight over where his nipple would have been. Such precision combined with force caused the right side of his torso to crack and squelch with visible muscular tear, outright bypassing any Hierro he might have boasted of possessing.

"H-How did you-?!" Zommari began to inquire, eyes shakily glancing down at the shorter Shinigami.

"You were always such an arrogant bastard," Aaroniero's darkly stated, looking upwards with a menacing gleam in her eyes. Pupils would contract and shift into outright slits, predatorily sneering at the sweat-beading face of her colleague. Purposely she would let her own Reiatsu slip into Zommari's corpse so he would know precisely mocked him.

"Impossible!" Zommari uttered aloud, his face contorting one of realization and horror, "you're-!"

"**San no Mai**," Aaroniero enunciated with a widespread, tooth sparkling smile. Swinging the blade in a arc to bisect him from the right pectoral to the left shoulder, an instantaneous flash freezing wave would encompass the wound outright, allowing for a clean frozen cut. "**Shirafune!**"

The shocked expression would be all that Zommari would be allowed to show as his upper half wetly crunched and slapped onto the ground left of his enemy. An audible kick would be made by Aaroniero as she'd kick the lower half over the cleanly severed other half.

Sheathing her blade back into her scabbard, Aaroniero chuckled sinisterly down at her slain ex-comrade, "Serves you right, you show-off. An unceremonious end is fitting for someone who was all about flair and the dramatic. Don't worry, though; I'll make sure to use your powers for a greater calling than you ever had for Lord Aizen."

Placing her hand over his remains, she swiftly transformed it into the Glotonería hand she employed over Gantenbainne. A sickening squelch of shredded muscle and bones later, Zommari's bodily remains would be devoured and absorbed into Aaroniero. His aspect and everything that made him who he was, would be preserved within her own core.

"Now," She said to herself, reverting her hand back to normalcy. Upon sheathing her blade she turned to look at the distant yet still face prone Sado. A swift leap over to his side she eyed him down at her feet. "what am I going to do with you?"

She knew she had options to consider at this point.

While she knew the raging battles taking place elsewhere would attract the most attention, Zommari's disappearing Reiatsu would certainly attract someone's notice. Devouring as many promising individuals, especially those with Hollow powers, would be within her best interest. Then again, she couldn't ignore the cons to that choice either.

"_If I devour Sado, people will start wondering where he is or what happened to his body. There is a small chance that Ichigo Kurosaki may come looking for him. Though with the number of Espada present in Las Noches on top of Aizen's two Lieutenants, I doubt that will be a large issue_," Aaroniero noted to herself, cupping her chin as she examined Sado's unmoving body at her feet.

A distant Reiatsu would suddenly catch her attention. With her eyes gazing in awe at what she could assume would be a cacophony of explosions and shockwaves, she knew it could only be Ichigo Kurosaki and Grimmjow Jeagerjaques.

"_Wait a minute! Wasn't Ichigo being beaten by Ulquiorra? What's going on?!_" Aaroniero found herself doubting what was going on. Immediately she placed her fingers against her temples, activating her advanced Pesquisa to analyze the situation. She began by scoping out the Reiatsus with the highest output and the ones with largest concentration.

"_It seems Uryu Ishida and Renji Abarai are still in battle with Szayel. I don't sense Ulquiora's Reiatsu anywhere. Was he killed? I can't be certain someone of that caliber was taken down by anyone, let alone someone who was obviously on the receiving end last time I checked. Grimmjow seems to be involved somehow, as he's the one fighting Ichigo who's a bit stronger than he was before. With the way I'm feeling this, their battle is coming to a close soon_," She noted. Scanning the other areas of Las Noches, she could tell Ichigo's battle was receiving the most attention by the other high ranking members. Most notably the Tres and Quinto, each of them watching from notable distances the ensuing battle being had.

"_This invasion seems to be getting more complicated with Ichigo's involvement_," Aaroniero thought aloud, releasing the Pesquisa as she opened her eyes. Smiling with a conniving light in her eyes, she could only chuckle to herself, "_perhaps I can use that to my advantage. With all eyes on you, I doubt they're even paying half a mind to what's going on with Szayel's actions._"

A sickening stir of her left hand turning back into a hungry five prong mouth transpired later. Kneeling down, she proceeded to have her tubular proboscis sink its teeth into Sado's body. She could only laugh as she watched with carnal fascination as his body would be broken down and be absorbed into her being.

"The more leverage I gain, the better I stand a chance of surviving this invasion. The more I consume the more I evolve. And soon, before anyone will know it," Aaroniero would finish as the last visible bulge of essence flowed up her arm and into her core, reforming her hand just as she smiled towards the horizon. "I will become unstoppable!"

* * *

**A/N: **This Chapter was a fun one for me. Not just for the fact I could pit a Rukia-esque fight against Zommari, but it was the first time I could literally see Aaroniero using his knowledge of the other Espada and use it against them.

**_EDIT NOTE:_** I added in **an entire new battle.** While I had hesitated, for reasons of increasing the Chapter length beyond comfort levels of some readers, I came back wanting to add this in regardless. Please comment and let me know what you thought of it ^^

Also writing out the various perspectives and changing them up a bit to suit my narrative style was equally enjoyable. I hope you all liked what I did with them, hopefully adding some character development to each well known Espada. Maybe a little more insight, by my own opinion of course, as to what their opinions are of Aaroniero or even what their own personalities are like for, well, why they are what they are.

**Food For Thought**: Aaroniero's specialized Pesquisa, by the way, translates from Spanish to English as, "Mind Search."

Please leave your thoughts and comments below in the Review Section. I hope this story captivates your attention as much as it is enjoyable for myself to write. Until then, I shall see you all on the next update of **A Predator Among Us**!"


	3. A Devil's Fruit

**A Predator Among Us**

* * *

"I've had enough of this shit!" Nnoitra snarled out, planting his jester styled boot on Ichigo's back. Pulling back the Shinigami's sword arm, the Espada began to bend his wrist and twist the forearm. The sound of muscular straining and bones on the verge of snapping entirely were heard. All of the painful sounds would be drowned out by Ichigo's cries of agony, earning more than a handful of sneering chuckles from the Arrancar. "go on! Squeal! I want to hear you scream as I break this precious arm of yours!"

"Itsygo," Nel began to call out, her frail form inert and unable to reach her beloved friend in his time of need. Watching him being brutalized by such a savage entity caused her eyes to water with sadness. Something about this situation, this desperate sadness, tugged something within her heart and mind.

Her head began to throb.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Ichigo howled out loud as he felt further strain placed upon his arm. He knew it would be a matter of seconds before his dominant hand would be cracked and the rest of his limb twisted out of its original shape. Pain flooded his body, rekindling the dulled nerves that had been projecting the stress of his fight with Grimmjow. With little to no spare Reiryoku, his Bankai was useless and his Hollow powers unable to be called upon.

"Itsygo!" Nel cried out louder, her petite hands grasping the loose grains of sand, tears overflowing from her eyes down her cheeks. The pain of distant memories slowly burning into the surface of her mind's eye. It's as if the most painful part of her life reawakened her past as she saw Ichigo endure the most tormenting last moments of this hour.

Her whole body shook.

"Drop the sword already, you bitch!" Nnoitra laughed, further twisting the Shinigami's wrist, feeling it almost give way to the pressure he placed on it.

"Stop it, please!" Ichigo begged pitifully at the top of his lungs.

"ITSYGOOOOOOOOOO!" Nel shouted at the top of her lungs, as her whole body shook with an uncontrollable fluctuation. As if the current Nel and the past one seemed to collide into each other, merge their last moments of outright suffering, and coalesce them together. That shaking would turn into a quaking pressure as her body glowed a bright pink.

Then, it all released at once. A pink gaseous explosion of Reishi discharged out in a wide radius, shaking the ground and filling the air with an immense Reiatsu.

"What?!" Nnoitra halted his torture of Ichigo immediately of what he heard and saw. The cloud of Reishi swirled and billowed around a feminine silhouette, only retaining a familiar shape to both viewers.

"N-Nel?" Ichigo gasped aloud, seeing the figure steadily walk forward.

Even the pair, Nnoitra's Fraccion Tesra Lindocruz whom was restraining Orihime Inoue, looked aghast. While the latter was just as shocked as Ichigo, the prior's memories of her resurfaced in moments. The elegant and powerful Espada had been reborn!

What would be revealed was similar yet entirely different from the child Ichigo had been lugging around. She was a lot taller, the same height as her protector, and possessed a voluptuously curved body. Stray pieces of her ragged cloak now stretched over her waist to cover her upper thighs while her expansive bosom was barely kept decent by her newfound emerald cloth top. Double crescent moon guarded sheathed katana in her right hand, and a newfound stoic expression crossing her face.

The sight of her since her emergence put Nnoitra on guard. Releasing Ichigo, he turned his back on his captive while holding onto his own Zanpakutō. Narrowing his eye, he said with an appraising manner, "You may look a little different, but that really is you, Nelliel-"

His speech would be interrupted by the bodily disappearance of the awakened Arrancar. His eye widened as he felt her presence drop just behind him, causing him to turn his head over his shoulder to see her momentarily grasp a hold of Ichigo. Before he could even raise his weapon to attack, she disappeared again, only to be heard and felt a good dozen meters away.

"You...bitch!" Nnoitra swore aloud with venom, loathing that he lost his catch so easily to her.

As Nelliel held Ichigo's ground prone form, she stared stoically at her former comrade with a protective gait. She could feel Ichigo's ragged breath grow steadier and calmer, putting relief into her heart. It was only when she heard his turn of the head to incline up at her face, that she bothered to look down.

"N-Nel!" Ichigo exclaimed shakily, still recovering from the pain he was experiencing at the hands of his enemy. "is that...really you?"

"Yes," Nelliel responded in a soft, tender voice, "I am. I also want to thank you for protecting me."

"Thank me?!" Ichigo blinked with surprise.

"Yes," The emerald haired Arrancar nodded, "since you protected me since travelling farther into Las Noches, I was able to gather more Reishi to speed up my recovery in my child form. While the blow to my head made me forget who I was, seeing you in pain made me remember and allowed me to release the seal of this technique: **Regresión**."

Standing up, she released her hold on Ichigo to keep a firm grip on her sheathed sword, "You've been protecting me all this time, ever since we met. Now, I'm going to be the one doing the protecting."

"Wait! Hold on a sec!" Ichigo quickly retorted, flipping himself from his back onto his chest, staring up at Nelliel's turned green tressed head as she turned her back to him. "don't tell me you intend to fight that guy?!"

"Don't worry, Ichigo," Nel briefly turned her gaze to glance at him from over her shoulder. Returning her gaze forward at the distantly sneering Nnoitra, a gust of wind would flow across the sandy dunes and plains they stood upon. Her hair flourished up her back along with her ragged top, revealing a single black tattooed number that poetically solidified her next chosen words, "This will all be over in just a minute."

**3**

"_She's...a rank higher than...Ulquiorra?!_" Ichigo gasped aloud at his startling train of thoughts, crashing around enough to cause his eyes to spin.

Just as Ichigo dwelled on these thoughts, dust kicked up into his face, causing his eyes to widen. Her sprint could be compared to a green hued wraith, seeming to pass through the air rather than push it. Scabbard in her left hand, the weapon would be raised up to be horizontally aligned with her bosom, palming the hilt with her right.

Nnoitra, better seeing her due to her bee line direction, raised his double-crescent scythe above his head.

Before he could even swing his scythe down at the rapidly approaching Nel, a sensation of red-hot pain would spread across his chest down to his abdomen. Widening his eye, he'd look down incredulously as a copious amount of blood was shed from his skin. Nel's person seemed to dance with sword in hand, having pierced his skin effortlessly with a quickdraw of her Zanpakutō.

"Why you-!" Nnoitra shouted aloud, finally swinging his weapon down, aiming to catch her in her landing onto the sandy ground before him.

A quick repulsion in the cleft of his double-moon scythe was made, synchronized in a acrobatic twirling leap on Nelliel's part. She made a complete one hundred and eighty degree revolution within the air, her emerald hairs whipping around in a mesmerizing manner that caught Nnoitra by surprise. Was she always this graceful in battle, he would wonder.

Then, face would feel the brunt force of a horizontally aligned, bodily spun snap kick. Enough power was placed to displace the air currents, popping it in a spherical expansive explosion of the wind. Even as the ground indented and sandy grains rose up, Nel would land with a smile on her face, long before Nnoitra's pathetic screams spiraled along with his flailing body. The crash he made into a distant bould was significant enough to cause a sizable shockwave that shook the battlefield, proclaiming in a single impact that followed a stroke of her sword just how powerful she was.

"Is this really...Nelliel's true power?!" Ichigo exclaimed with an exasperated visage, propping himself into an upright position.

Out of the smoke, Nnoitra rose from the strewn debris. His eye was widened to a livid degree, a trickle of blood escaping the corner of his mouth. A visible purple bruise from where Nelliel had struck was seen, further displaying the power she projected into that kick. As if to nail the final blow into the coffin of Nnoitra's humility, he rolled around a single loose object from his mouth and spat it out.

He'd lost a tooth from that kick, explaining the blood leaking from his mouth.

"YOU," Nnoitra yelled out angrily, his tongue pushing out of his mouth, displaying his Espada ranking of 5 while exclaiming loudly, "BLTCH!"

Swiftly, a vast amount of condensed yellow hued Reishi gathered around the tip of his tongue. While he growled with rabid concentration, his pupil contracting to a bead in size. With a backward wave of his arms, Nnoitra shrieked out, releasing a damningly loud Cero expand in a wide gait.

"LOOK OUT, NEL!" Ichigo shouted with alarm, remembering the sight and sensation of pain a Cero placed upon himself. Seeing the mouth of the searing light head towards her, and incidentally himself, struck a chord of fear within his heart.

However, all doubts vanished when Nel's hand lazily stretched forward, catching the Cero. The solar-hued light bent at an arc, roaring around and about Nel's position. The sandy grains held true due to her placement and control, a display of her dominance over Nnoitra's attack.

"The Hell?!" Nnoitra exclaimed with bafflement.

As Nelliel held the Cero, she inhaled deeply, expansively opening her mouth. Within moments, the amassed Cero that was held at bay began to spiral into her ravenous maw. An audible sucking sound similar to a vacuum was heard as the light vanished and the last flickers of Reishi ebbed over her closing mouth.

"Wait a minute-!" Nnoitra shouted with realization, "that's-!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Nelliel screamed out, releasing a torrential fissure of pink bordered white light. Her own signature technique, the **Cero Doble**, flowed forth like a geyser of searing light. Carving a trench of sand as it passed over, it would quickly travel back to the source of the original Cero's launch, aiming to ram straight into the Espada.

Nnoitra barely had time to turn his left side around to have his right weapon wielding side to face the blaze the Cero created. His widened further as he felt the sheer force that was placed upon his skin and Zanpakutō. It brought back so many distasteful memories, something he thought that he'd never revisit.

Then, it exploded.

A dramatic upheaval of orange-golden flames would spurt upwards, like a pillar of molten slag. Curtains of sand billowed around the source of the explosion, parting and waving backwards in the wake of the attack. When the smoke would finally die down, the silhouette of a standing figure would be seen.

Nnoitra's entire right arm bled and displayed burns of the second degree. Steam etched across his weapon, showing that it took some of the brunt of the blast for him. Part of the spoon collar-hood was blasted away, as a result showing part of his opposing cheek being slightly charred by the attack. A vicious and unforgiving sneer worked its way across his face, glaring at Nelliel with the utmost loathing.

"That hurt, you bitch!" Nnoitra yelled out, waving his enormous scythe to the side with emphasis, displaying the bleeding and smoking burns covering his right arm.

"You survived," Nel declared as a statement, rather than a query. Her eyes narrowed within the wake of a soft exhale of resignation. Leaving her scabbard where she dropped it, the former Espada treaded forward with confidence and no hint of fear. As she reached the mark of merely ten meters away, the former Tres Espada raised her blade to point at Nnoitra, its face catching the artificial Sun's rays to create a menacing silhouette across her stoic visage. "it looks like you've grown stronger, Nnoitra. This may take a little longer than I thought."

"Of course it is!" Nnoitra shouted incredulously, leaping forward with both hands on his weapon's pole handle. With a downward swipe, her sword would collide with the cleft of his dual crescent scythe, emphasized with a finalized shout. "I _am_ stronger than _you_!"

"We shall see," Nel returned with a low whisper, as the world around them turned into a shower of sparks and upheaved grains of sand.

* * *

**Chapter 3 - A Devil's Fruit**

* * *

"Nelliel?!" Aaroniero breathed out a gasp. A distant gust of wind rustled her cloak and Shikhakushou, weighed by the Reishi particles that were breathed out by Nelliel's own Reiatsu. The realization that she was not dead made her destination, and the objective of attaining more strength, all the more favorable. A chuckle escaped her mouth as her smile widened with excitement swelling in her chest. "I don't know how you survived, but it matters little now. While you distract that bastard Nnoitra, I'll just help myself to some more spoils of war."

Renewing her sprint, Aaroniero knew haste was of the essence.

"_Spiritual Bodies don't last forever once deceased. If the signature I'm detecting goes out, there's no telling when the body's decomposition into Reishi and disperses in that time,_" Aaroniero calculated within her mind, furrowing her brows with knowing. "_Arrancars themselves seem to have a nasty habit of expiring quickly when they're dealt a fatal blow. I learned the hard way that killing one doesn't necessarily guarantee the same results that transpired with Metastacia. After all, he was designed to come back to Hueco Mundo in death and him retaining Kaien's body helped it have a longer post mortem durability._"

With this in mind, Aaroniero continued her rapid approach towards her goal. That was, until she caught sight of a wall of white cloaked, skull masked Arrancars. Each of them wore black sheathed swords, tucked within the folds of their parallel dyed _obi._ They numbered up to two hundred in total, established in rows of ten to solidify their military efficient posture.

"Exequias!" Aaroniero exhaled with shock, her sandal bound feet skidding across the sand, grinding to a halt before them.

"_**Shinigami,**_" A grated, Hollow voice spoke from behind Aaroniero, followed by the succinct buzz of a Sonido employment. As she turned her head around, she'd see a similar robed Arrancar of slightly taller stature. Instead of an identical skull, it looked more like a skull of a bull mounted onto a human body. The hollow eye sockets hauntingly stared impassively at her, sword already in his right hand and pointed downwards with a sense of ease. "_**we've been tracking you since the disappearance of Privaron Gantenbainne Mosqueda and Séptima Espada Zommari Rureaux. You should hide your Reiatsu a bit better to evade the likes of us.**_"

"_Rudbornn!_" Aaroniero thought with alarm, rearing back and immediately squatting down into a fighting stance. With her hand on her sword's hilt, she narrowed her eyes at the leader of the Exequias, keeping in mind of his subordinates that began to circle around her. "_this isn't good. I never liked Rudbornn even though he's been around quite awhile in Aizen's Army. Leader of a Cleanup crew with a bit too much power for a battalion with little authority outside of Las Noches. If they're here, it means that they must be the only ones aware of my activities...for now._"

"_**Not going to speak?**_" Rudbornn inquired, albeit rhetorically, seeming to take steps forward without waiting for a response. "_**Very well. Let us talk with our blades.**_"

It happened too fast for her liking. One moment, he had been speaking and treading slowly forward. The next he was within her personal space, thrusting his katana towards her heart. Had it not been for her stance of alertness, she wouldn't have been able to draw her sword and redirect it to cut the side of her left arm instead. Completing her unsheathing sword stroke, her blade's edge grinded across Rudbornn's and sliced through the air towards his own chest. Much to her chagrin, it would be repelled with a left handed swipe of his wrist, creating a shower of sparks from the collision; this hardly caused any real damage beyond the superficial laceration to his glove.

Before the two could further engage, Aaroniero opted for a backpedaling Shunpo, her feet touching down upon the sand half a dozen meters away from his reach. While she had no intention of getting close to the myriad of skull headed soldiers, she didn't want to try her luck against the stoic and competent executor. After all, he wasn't known for his thoroughness for naught from what she could remember. Seeing that their leader made no intention of moving forward, she placed her free hand to the scrape placed at her arm, having cut a small tear through her kosode sleeve in the process. Brief glow of healing energy sealed the wound in seconds, allowing her hand to return to the other, where it lied gripping the sword properly.

"_**Good reactions, Shinigami Kuchiki,**_" Rudbornn spoke a bit more formally, lowering his blade to his side as he clenched his free hand. "_**but your Reiryoku is the typical equivalent of a well trained Lieutenant of the Gotei 13. At the level you're at, I'd hardly call you worthy of the challenge of facing you myself.**_"

"I've yet to even try, Arrancar!" Aaroniero spoke insistently, raising her blade up in an upright position.

"**Dance,**" She enunciated in a level tone, causing her Reiatsu to spike and her Zanpakutō to transform. From a standard katana, a beautiful crystalline pearly surface flowed across hilt and blade alike, creating a gleaming white sword. A ribbon stretched from a handful of beads from the pommel spun in a circular motion, revealing the Shikai of the weapon in its complete splendor. "**Sode no Shirayuki!**"

"_So that's the Zanpakutō that slayed Master Arruerrie,_" Rudbornn realized from his impassive stanced position, "_I haven't collected enough data to make a good assessment of her abilities. Time to let the Calaveras unveil her powers for me._"

"Now then," Aaroniero declared in a stoic tone, grasping the sword in both hands, holding it close to her right cheek in a parallel form, "I think it's time I've taken care of you and your men."

A sudden leap forward, and Aaroniero was within Rudbornn's vicinity thanks to a well timed Shunpo. Thrusting her snow hued sword forward, she propelled it with the momentum of her acceleration. The sudden crack of her sword's edge meeting the X shape of two swords crossing over each other in front of Rudbornn's unmoving chest caused her to widen her eyes with shock. Sparks flew and a gust of wind flourished the linen hugging the Arrancars and the Shinigami body that was now hers.

"**_If you intend to take me down,_**" Rudbornn said in a mocking tone, not even bothering to raise his blade. Instead, his Calaveras raised their free hands, spreading their digits apart, with their palms aimed directly at Aaroniero's face. The swift thrum of Reishi being primed would be followed by the violet shining overcast the pair of Ceros made before their hands. "**_you'll have to destroy the entirety of the Exequias!_**"

Aaroniero reacted quickly upon the last words spoken. Releasing the pressure she had been using against Rudbornn's Sword Shield, she employed two Shunpos: the first to outrun the head of the twin ceros, and the second to leap to the side away from the fissures of searing Reishi. Due to her quick response time, she kept herself from suffering any immediate retaliatory damage, putting herself a good distance away from the now exploding dual beams of light that tackled a sand dune a good fifty meters away.

But she didn't find much solace seconds later.

Six buzzes sounded out loud the arrival of more Calaveras. Three of them dropped down with swords ready to stab her from above, while the other three rushed at her from all angles. With blades poised to strike and momentum carrying them, Rudbornn knew physical confrontation would only further their advantage. Instead, she allowed them all to get within her personal space, just before she spread her own feet and slashed her white blade in a purposeful arc.

"**Some no mai, Tsukishiro!**"

In a singular instance of Shunpo, Aaroniero distanced herself away from a upward blaze of freezing light, encompassing the charging Calaveras. Their visages of imminent attack would be captured, frozen on display in a white pillar. Seconds later it would crack and shatter, scattering their remains into the wind in a frosty breeze of decomposing Reishi.

But where she retreated, more of Rudbornn's subordinates lied in waiting. Two Calaveras charged in, one swinging high and the other low, each one responding in perfect synchronization with each other to pressure their Shinigami opponent. A series of metallic impacts created a cacophony of sparks to flourish around the combatants, all of which seemed to push her back with their continuous assault. When a third appeared from behind, via Sonido, Aaroniero briefly looked to the side and narrowed her eyes with decisiveness.

"_Time to get a little innovative!_" She thought, as she swerved her head to the left, dodging a sword thrust from her rightmost opponent. Simultaneously, she pushed her sword up to deflect another impaling strike. Using only one hand to accomplish this feat, she reached out and grappled his sword hand's wrist with her left and began to move. Swinging her body by her vice grip on her enemy, the back of her left arm briefly clapped over the extended right limb, her body spinning around in a 360 degree angle to plant her back to the Calavera's. With momentum powering her grapple, Aaroniero spun on her right heel to spin in a ninety degree right hand turn to slam the Calavera into his comrade's back with a bone-crunching snap. Both of them tumbled forward in a bodily heap that crashed into the unsuspecting third soldier, crashing into him into a small pile of disjointed limbs and white linen fabric.

"**Hadō #33, Sōkatsui!**" Aaroniero chanted aloud, extending her palm towards the struggling bodies just moments prior to a discharge of volatile Reishi left her fingertips. Crossing the space as quickly as any of their Ceros had, the cobalt flames consumed them all in a vibrant explosion, blowing back the sands that the Kidō had carved a good trench through. Even by the time of their demise, twelve more circled around Aaroniero, each holding their swords with readiness and impassive resolve to strike her down.

"_They're staying just outside my range to use Tsukishiro,_" Aaroniero noted with knitted brows of observation, turning her head side to side to observe each of them, "a_nd it seems they aren't all charging in at once. It seems they're wary of engaging in close quarters combat now. Smart bunch, these soldiers of yours, Rudbornn._"

When Aaroniero finished her complimenting analysis, the Calaveras all moved in unison. Raising each of their free hands, they all began to prime what looked like twelve Ceros, creating a distinct overcast of violet light over the immediate environment. Aaroniero's eyes didn't waver this time, keeping her senses sharp to see what they intended to do. They didn't seemed suicidal in their tendencies, so she held her ground to see what their aim was.

At the seemingly last second, all of the Calaveras leaped back and up, firing their Ceros in unison to strike the ground prone Shinigami. As the Calavera Cero collided with each other, it appeared within the light of their combined attacks and immense pillar of rising flames following the explosion. When the shockwave send reverberating waves of sand in all directions, their enemy reappeared and did so behind one of their own.

Thrusting her sword through his chest, she swung her free hand out towards the leftmost enemy, chanting aloud, "**Bakudo #4, Hainawa!**"

In an instant, a golden rope of binding energy discharged from her fingertips, bodily ensnaring the unprepared Calavera. In the same move as she slashed her blade out of her recent kill's right side, letting him fall to the ground limply, she rushed forward with sword in hand. Her accelerated rush of Shunpo allowed her to grind her blade past the guard of a defending soldier, stabbing him through the shoulder, following up with a vicious kick to chest that'd allow her to withdraw the sword and cut his throat in the process.

When Calaveras recovered from their initial shock of her sudden methods, Aaroniero responded accordingly.

Swinging her sword hand's forefingers towards a shimmering arrival of a Calavera to her right, she briefly shouted a brief chant as a lightning bolt of azure light pierced the skull of her enemy with precise aim, "**Hadō #4, Byakurai!**"

The Arrancar subordinate fell limply down to the ground, leaving behind six other figures of white to blur forth, aiming to overwhelm her with relentless attrition. Turning on her heel, Aaroniero tugged on the golden rope still in her left hand, pulling the bound Calavera across the air. Turning their heads to notice too late, the Hollow soldiers were knocked awry as the flying body haplessly collided into their charging frames. This caused the binding Kidō to continuously spew out from the original captive, spraying out into a net of yellow restrictive currents, haphazardly bundling them all up into a ball of limbs and silk covered bodies.

By the time the final three let loose a barrage of Balas from a distance, Aaroniero was already nimbly dodging with a series of Shunpos, hauling her catch behind her just as swiftly. Leaping up to a higher altitude, Aaroniero whipped around the mass of bodies around to arc towards their midst, causing the Calaveras to backpedal to avoid initial contact. What they failed to notice were the words muttered under their enemy's breath, signifying a significant swelling of crimson light rushing down towards the netted caught bodies.

"**Hadō #31, Shakkahō!"**

Any screams that Aaroniero would hear were drowned out by the spherical expansive blast of crimson light of her Kidō. All of the bodies caught within the binding Kidō were instantly rendered into ashen bits, leaving little to no remains behind. The retreating Calaveras were unfortunate enough to not suffer a swift death, their bodies propelled back by the sheer force of the massive explosion created by their adversary. Pitiful cries of pain were heard as their forms, burnt to indistinguishable appearances, trailed down with smoke curling across their charred frames.

Aaroniero took a few moments to admire her handiwork. The high altitude winds flourished her beige desert cloak around her body, her raven tressed bangs flapping around her stoic violet eyes, gazing down at the bodies of still standing mass of Exequias ranks. Seeing that they once again gave her reprieve to come up with a strategy of their own, she didn't hesitate to fully take in her situation.

"_They're all of adequate Lieutenant class, more than a match fighting en masse against me. While I doubt any of them could inflict serious damage to me, it would be unwise to gamble on my body's durability with Rudbornn waiting in the shadows. His power is certainly more than a match for my own, even adding Rukia's to the fold. If I'm to approach him, I need his men out of the way, giving me more of an advantage once again,_" She thought with assertion, raising her sword up in a presenting manner. As if accepting an invitation, two dozen additional Calaveras appeared at varying distances, each with sword drawn and prepared to engage in further combat. Looking side to side, she gathered herself as she planned. "_this won't be easy, but I think I can get rid of them all in one fell swoop._"

During the time the dozen proximate soldiers cautiously approached, their enemy began to emit a emission of Reiatsu. The light azure light radiating off her body whipped her cloak to and fro across her form, just as animatedly as her black bangs over her stoic eyes. Crouching down in the middle of the air she hovered upon, she lowered a free hand down towards her left hip and held her sword's flat against her chest with readiness.

"_I can't hold back against these subordinates of Rudbornn's. I'll have to use_ _the power I used to defeat Zommari. Ten percent of my own Reiryoku in addition to Rukia's should suffice, after all!_" Aaroniero thought with narrowed eyes of focused initiative.

With that thought in mind, Aaroniero moved in a series of dizzying spins within the air. To and fro her cloaked frame would feign aggressive attacks at the Calaveras surrounding her, afterimages being left behind giving the impression of her plethora of Shunpo employments. Sparks flew from sword clashes and various discharges of Balas complementing aimless sword swings by the airborne Calaveras.

When she finally halted her movements, her sword was held in a dramatic turn of the right arm. Her head bowed lowly, obscuring her eyes in the silhouette of her own dark tresses. Her visible mouth would part slightly and whisper in a hallowed tone of finality, "**Shirokyūten!**"

In a matter of seconds, twenty one rings of white light activated upon her command. While the vicinity of her dozen mutual altitude prone enemies were caught in a few of them, the majority were targeted downwards to the grounded ranks of what remained of the Exequias. The pale light soon became pillars of instantaneous freezing ice, capturing all of those in their merciless grasp, imprisoning them in their arctic clutches.

"A fitting name for a technique to destroy an entire army in a single deployed strike," Aaroniero said softly to herself, swinging her sword out in a decisive stroke, causing all of the pillars to shatter at once. Dropping to the ground with a single Shunpo, the collaborated destruction of her technique created a scenery of falling snow and ice particles. The Reishi fell down mesmerizingly, flourishing around her person, covering the crown of her head along with her cloak and the rest of the ground with its majestic coating of frozen moisture.

"I've disposed of your minions, Arrancar," Aaroniero called out, turning her gaze over to the impassive posture of Rudbornn, standing a good distance away from where her attacks made contact. Pointing her blade purposely in a goading manner, she continued with an icy glare projected at his empty eye sockets. "it is your turn to taste the cold edge of my Sode no Shirayuki."

For the longest time, Rudbornn didn't seem to respond. He had watched his Shinigami adversary's movements for sometime, feeling out her abilities and strength using his Pesquisa from afar. Now that she had effectively executed all of the men he had assimilated to combat her, he knew that she was a foe worthy of reckoning among the invaders whom had successfully fought through their opposition.

A scoffing laugh would be let loose from the skull-headed Arrancar, promoting the confidence he felt in his own abilities, "_**Your Zanpakutō wasn't even able to scratch past my Hierro, and you think just because it's in a released state that it can harm me now? You seriously overestimate your abilities if you think my Calaveras and I are on the same level.**_"

When Rudbornn finished speaking, he'd find himself staring at a wide expanse of snow, geysering towards his direction. He didn't even manage to see the four spouts of icy Reishi that Aaroniero had poked into the ground before her feet, just the result of a tidal wave of icy wave of freezing Reiatsu. For some reason it reminded him of Hueco Mundo's sands, hurdling straight at him and intent on crushing him underneath its dense weight.

Wordlessly, Rudbornn swung his sword in an upward stroke at the pillar of freezing wind. This caused the attack to be bifurcated, straight down the middle in the wake of a transparent wave of violet Reiatsu projected from his sword swing. To his surprise, the flakes of snow did little to disturb the environment other than pass over it, leaving trails of majestic light of white and blue.

More disturbingly, his enemy disappeared from the point of the attack's launch. It would only be thanks to his Pesquisa that he'd notice movement out of the corner of his eye, masked by the passing vapors of super cold air. Spinning upon the ball of his right foot, he'd lean his upper body to the left to avoid a beheading diagonal stroke of the pearly hued edge of his adversary's weapon.

As he evaded, he returned in kind with a right handed overhead strike at the diminutive proportioned Shinigami, earning a two-handed defensive stance to absorb his sword's strike. Snowflakes and sparks flew from the two opposing swords, violet eyes meeting empty sockets. A smirk donned upon Aaroniero's face, her gaze drifting upon the frozen shallow cut made upon the right cheekbone of the Arrancar's mask. Though it might as well been superficial, the sight of frozen moisture having spread a good few inches of the mask's surface was enough to warrant attention with a slight jerk of the Arrancar's head.

"Do I warrant your attention now, Arrancar?" Aaroniero asked in a jeering sneer.

"**_You are an enemy worth destroying,_**" Rudbornn responded coldly, his body eerily glowing alight a violet hue in readiness for the battle that will follow. "**_you should feel privileged enough to cross blades with the likes with me. And then, you shall feel despair for ever challenging the Captain of the Exequias!_**"

* * *

**Palace of the Raging Seas**

Tier felt in awe of what she was witnessing. Where she had witnessed a true battle between Ichigo Kurosaki, someone who imitated Hollow powers to the extent that she could believe him to be an Arrancar, do mortal combat against Grimmjow Jeagerjaques. The titanic struggle left sand dunes collapsed, towers and spyres alike crumbled with every haphazard collision of their bodies or mutual attacks. The sky literally darkened in the wake of the Sexta's **Desgarrón**, using immense force to intend on destroying the Substitute. Incredibly, before awe-opened eyes of the Tres Espada, Ichigo had defeated Grimmjow soundly. **  
**

Then came Nnoitra Gilga.

The repulsive vulture of war, he cared not for honorable fights or lived by any meaningful code that his nearly slain brother had, by his own hands no less. All he cared for was bloodshed and remaining on top, never to be looked down on by those of higher stature. He made no secret of his loathing for her, saying that her predecessor was a lot like her but more disgusting as he put it. From the way he talked, it appeared he had killed the last Tres through treachery, though she found no evidence that he had done such a feat.

After the barbarian was enjoying torturing the fading signature she knew was Ichigo Kurosaki's, a sudden pulse rocketed from the horizon. Almost as assuredly she closed her eyes with resignation that the fight was reaching a close, a mushroom cloud of sakura hued Reishi in the form of smoke flourished to life. Her blonde lashes blinked rapidly to convey her passively stoic face a moment of rare surprise.

"_This Reiatsu,_" She breathed out in a gasp behind her aquatic breather collar, "_it feels as if its a genuine Arrancar...of Espada Class?!_"

Her Fraccion had been within their own form of rapt silence. Since their leader demanded their attention to be fixated where hers was, they didn't have the nerve to snap at each other or question her intentions. One major battle after another, they now understood why their mistress didn't act immediately. The force combatting Nnoitra that had emerged quite literally from nowhere was in a league all its own.

"_If that is my predecessor, coming back for revenge, I wouldn't blame her,_" Tier concluded with a cold glare aimed at the shockwaves to follow such a battle, "_that beast has no place among the Espada. If he dies it is only due to his own foolish bloodthirst._"

* * *

**The Howling Wolf Palace**

"What the-?!" Lilynette cried out, sitting upright from her own much smaller pile of cushions next to Starrk's. Looking swiftly to her right, past Starrk reclining form, her visible eye open wide. In her mind's eye, she could sense the Reiatsu signature as if she was staring through the wall with a telescopic intensity that burrowed through the solid palace walls.

"Hmph?" Starrk inquired groggily, turning his face down positioned jaw so that its drooling cavern be exposed along with a single lazy eye, "what's up, Lily?"

"It's Nelliel! It has to be!" The young girl cried out with excitement, a light shining in her eye that erased the look of melancholy she shared with the drowsy man.

"Huh?" Starrk inclined his head up, blinking a few times, eyes expanding to express his own shock. "it...it really is her!"

For a few moments, the pair were both pleasantly surprised to feel the all too familiar presence of Nelliel from afar. While they were still looking for more Vasto Lordes to join Aizen's cause, Nelliel would frequently commune with the fellow Espada when she wasn't keeping an eye on the more rambunctious members of the army. Changing from cheerful and laid back to stoic and composed, she was one of the few that both could agree was a dear companion of theirs. From the way Nnoitra put it, she was ambushed with her guard down, and he buried her body where it fell. It wasn't something that sat well with them but something they couldn't challenge him, especially when they found a replacement so quickly after.

With their thoughts of the past, they too would also sense a secondary Reiatsu burning menacingly at a similar level and closer in proximity to the one that got their attention: Nnoitra Gilga.

"H-He's fighting her!" Lilynette gasped aloud, just realizing what this all meant. "he's trying to kill her!"

"We don't know that-" Starrk tried to reassure her, suddenly finding himself talking to empty space. Shifting his gaze, he saw the quickly retreating form of Lilynette as she sprinted out of the room and into the empty hall, "oi! Where are you going?! Lily!"

Lily briefly halted her escape of the room, stopping dead in her tracks. While this caused Starrk to stare at her with bewilderment, Lily began to speak in a solemn tone, "You keep mourning the fact that you can't be close to your friends. You tell me to mingle and be with them on my own, while not encouraging me to help them when they're in trouble. What you're doing isn't protecting them...it's you being a coward!"

Starrk's eyes blinked widely from his lounged position. He couldn't find the words to respond, let alone the will to deny what she said had merit or not. Looking down, he felt the next words jab at him as painful as a blade running through his chest.

"How can you call yourself the Primera if you can't fight for the ones you cherish?!"

It was shortly after a brief buzz of a Sonido was deployed that Starrk could feel her presence retreating. Lowering his eyes to half mast, he sighed raggedly and reclined once more onto his cushions. Rolling over to stare at the wall, the direction he could feel Nelliel's Reiatsu brim with intensity, he could only exhale sadness.

"I'm sorry..."

* * *

While the attention lied upon the former Tres Espada and current Quinto, another battle of epic proportions ensued beyond. Over distant sandy dunes lied a recessed valley, sporting a number of craters courtesy of Reishi explosions and Reiatsu collisions. Frost caked parts of the sand still not disturbed, yet soon would melt or dissipate into flakes of Reishi once again once the combatants in question would reappear.

One metal collision later of steel meeting literal cold steel would usher in the reappearance of the two warriors. Both fighters would feel the reverberations of force flow over their respective attire, flapping wildly around their forms. A single exerted thrust followed by a wave of violet colored Reishi would cause the female of the pair to be knocked across the air away from his person.

Recoiling from her latest parry, Aaroniero backpedaled within the air just a few meters above the sandy earth below.

"_His swordplay is certainly worthy of reckoning. I can't seem to find any openings since that one scratch I've left him,_" She noted to herself with knitted brows of frustration.

"**_You do well to stave off my attacks,_**" Rudbornn complimented, holding his sword parallel with his armed shoulder. With a turn of the wrist, the sharpened edge turned towards the horizon that its intended target lied. A brief pulsation of Reishi would be seen, coloring the blade into a solid mass of violet outlined white light.

"_Here it comes!_" Aaroniero thought, using one hand to raise her blade to the forefront and the other to be held out cautiously to her side.

A single swipe of the sword in a perfect horizontal arc, Rudbornn let loose a wall of high velocity launched Balas. Screaming forth, the speed coupled with the distance their target resided, it would only take a handful of seconds for the enemy to respond.

Thankfully, it was all the time that Aaroniero needed.

Whipping her free hand out, the Shinigami bodied Hollow rapidly discharged four Shakkahōs in a spread shot manner. Not bothering to dodge the rest, she nullified the ones aimed closest to her body, detonating the Kidō cannon shells against the violet hued orbs. The smokescreen created by the following explosion was great enough to send Balas careening to and fro across the sandy vista, uprooting dozens of meters of sand, creating a cacophonic display of haphazard destruction.

Rudbornn cautiously observed the cloud of smoke, noting his Pesquisa indicated her still living status. He half expected another pillar of snow to erupt from the expansive radius of sulfur and ozone. Instead he noted a shimmering flash of white steel, with a singular shimmering silk ribbon tailing its tsuba.

"**_Throwing your own sword?_**" Rudbornn spoke incredulously, his body blurring to the left instinctively to evade the rapidly approaching weapon, "**_a bit reckless of you, Shinigami!_**"

The last thing he expected the thrusting sword was to change directions entirely. Turning around to position its sharpened edge in line of the Arrancar's head, the glistening pale sword swung around in a decapitating arc.

"**_How?!_**" Rudbornn gasped under his breath, his body squatting narrowly to evade instant death. He didn't even notice the tip of his rightmost horn fall towards the ground, paying more attention to the near transparent chain of ice attached to the ribbon of the blade. With the smoke parted from the sword movement, he could see his adversary's right hand extending outwards, weaving a interlocking series of icy links to keep hold of her sword from afar.

"**Tsukishiro!**" Aaroniero enunciated aloud, causing the Arrancar to jerk his head around himself in panic. A brilliant blaze of freezing light materialized in moments, already stretching towards the heavens and the earth in a precisely carved circle. Just short of its full formation, a blur of white linen rocketed at a downward angle, plummeting into the sand in the hasty rush to evade the freezing prison she had constructed.

"**_That was too close,_**" Rudbornn heaved, still feeling the icy traces cling to his mask. Particles of frozen moisture quickly became brittle and crumbled around his shoulders and arms, a testament to how close to death or incapacitation he had been, "**_had I hesitated a second longer..._**"

The Arrancar trailed off upon feeling a Shunpo deployed a handful of meters behind him.

"**Bakudo #61,**" Rudbornn turned his head, seeing an upraised left forefinger, glowing vibrantly with elliptical stretching light. A single pointed gesture, and the light would spread outwards, singing through the air with the intention of jabbing into Rudbornn's body. "**Rikujōkōrō!**"

What happened next took Aaroniero by surprise. Instead of seeing six golden rods of rectangular shape ram into the Arrancar's body, the bull-headed Hollow spun in a 360 degree angle with sword outstretched. This created a visible field of repulsion around his person, flashing a vibrant purple flare upon the Bakudo's impact with it, shattering the miniature columns of binding energy.

"_He stopped it?!_" Aaroniero thought with widened eyes of surprise.

"**_Was that supposed to be your trump card?_**" Rudbornn asked incredulously. Seeing his enemy's weapon return to her grasp with a tug of the ice rope, he rose to full stature with renewed confidence. "**_I'm sure you're probably unaware, but the battle you've won with Master Arruruerie wasn't simply noticed, but recorded. From the time you thought you had the upperhand you had displayed the ability to use Kidō. I had perfectly analyzed the spell you utilized in that battle and came up with a perfect way of dispelling it._**"

Grinding her teeth together, she couldn't help but fixate a scowl at the Arrancar's soulless eyes. She had planned on incapacitating Rudbornn right then and there, taking time to kill him quickly so she could assimilate him at her own pace. But seeing that he could actually develop a tactic for Kidō he's seen only once, especially one of such a high level, and counter them didn't bode well for her.

"**_With all of the Kidō you've been using, I feel obligated to enlighten you about myself,_**" Rudbornn grated further, raising his blade to point at his Shinigami opponent.

A second later, Rudbornn rushed forth in the wake of a well timed Sonido, appearing just in front of Aaroniero's proximity. His blade appeared to be coated in a brilliant purple fire, swinging down in a bifurcating motion towards her left side.

"Ngh!" Aaroniero quickly raised her up to block it, perpendicular to the vertical arcing sword stroke. As a safeguard to keep from being overwhelmed, she placed her left palm to steady the far bladeless backside of her weapon, pushing back against flaming sword of Rudbornn's. What perplexed her was the fact the flames themselves didn't feel hot, even at this close proximity.

"**_Existencias Hueso!_**" Rudbornn called out, causing the vibrant tongues of purple and white burning along his blade to transform in shape. Flowing outwards, the flames spewed forth virulent lit bonds in the form of chains. They flowed over the sword without care and wrapped around her arms, flourishing over her shoulders and around her neck. Aaroniero could only gasp and grunt with confused strain, trying to rid herself of the energy that wrapped around her.

"**_It is too late to resist,_**" Rudbornn chided, backing up a meter to observe his technique's handiwork. "**_upon being endowed with the responsibilities of being Captain of the Exequias, I've taken upon myself to study the Shinigami arts of combat, to better my own abilities and to dispel their various powers. One such ability I had crafted for myself is a handful of binding spells, similar to that of your Bakudo style Kidō._**"

Upon finishing his explanation, the malevolently restrictive currents of Reishi finally stabilized. Its form appeared to be a skeletal form of a stocks, with alabaster hued material holding her sword wielding hand outwards along with her unarmed hand. With several chains jutting out from the ends of the stocks themselves, piercing the sandy earth for better purchase, it didn't look like there would be any movement on the Shinigami's part for the time being.

"**_This is my execution restriction spell, Existencias Hueso,_**" He elaborated with a swing of his sword, standing satisfyingly in front of his bound foe, "**_it keeps the arms completely immobilized, along with the head and rest of the body. I've noted that your Zanpakutō acts much like your Kidō, needing your hands to gesture in any given direction in order to manifest a spell or an attack. Keeping your hands restricted destroys your only form of offense and defense. You've lost, Shinigami._**"

"It certainly seems that way," Aaroniero said lowly, fixating her violet eyes up with begrudging admittance to her foe. "seeing as you've captured me, singlehandedly doing what the other two Espada failed to do. I can only wonder one thing..."

"**_What that might be?_**" The Arrancar inquired, feeling relaxed in his position of superiority over his captive.

"You pride yourself by being a Captain of this organization of yours, yet you keep referring to any Espada as Master. You're easily stronger than the last two Arrancars I've slain, yet you're subservient to them? I'm finding that hard to believe..." Aaroniero trailed out, allowing a smirk to work its way across her face.

"**_Hmph, a fair question, given it is one I've asked myself many a time,_**" Rudbornn huffed aloud, stabbing the edge of his sword into the ground, placing his palm onto the upraised pommel in a casual manner. "**_Lord Aizen has gifted me with great power, and with that power he also allowed me to be taught many things I would have not known as a simple Hollow. Yet, for whatever reasons, he lets inferiors in as his complementary best generals and warriors. Does he not see the command and prowess I utilize my troops so effectively? Am I not qualified to be one of his confidants? These questions plague me every night I spend in this wretched sun-filled place, watching and doing the whims of those who'd use my talents for their own ends. My duties are for Lord Aizen's sake, yet they use me as their personal puppet?!_**"

"You seem to do all the dirty work yet with very little reward," Aaroniero noted with an upraised brow, her smirk receding into a solemn expression. "why go out of your way to hunt me down? Was I in your way or was it for somebody else's agenda?"

"**_I was hunting down the Privaron Espada and those they've engaged in combat. Simply put, I was to kill those who remained standing, on the behest of another Espada, of course,_**" He explained bluntly, now sounding more disgruntled than he would have prior to the conversation.

"For someone with so much pride in his duties, they certainly don't appreciate your efforts. Why even serve Aizen when he doesn't even use your abilities to your greatest capability?" Aaroniero prodded.

"**_I am indebted to Lord Aizen for the powers I possess now. Without him, I would be but a lowly beast, imitating intelligence while scavenging on my own kin for power and proclamation of dominance. However, these Espada, I only have a few that I truly admire and respect. The ones who've been ordering me as of late, do not,_**" Rudbornn spoke in a darker, more bitter tone than before. Grasping the hilt of his sand planted sword, he unsheathed it, causing a visible spray of sparks to appear where he had withdrawn his weapon. "**_I will have words with the one who commanded me so carelessly without thought of my own integrity. As Captain of the Exequias, these tasks I've been performing have impugned my honor, and I will not allow one Espada to take advantage of my resources for his own authority._**"

As he spoke these words, the upper partition of Aaroniero's stock jettisoned like a rocket from its placement. Looking up, she could see it rise high up into the air, changing in shape as it slowed its ascent. A simple bone clad block turned into a guillotine blade with massive cleaver edges on either flank, a skull fixated on either side of the grim appearing weapon. It took little imagination to the currently bound Shinigami bodied Hollow what was to come next.

"**_In respect for your combat prowess I will grant you a swift execution,_**" Rudbornn grated out, raising his blade in a slow purposeful motion over his head, as if controlling the now airborne idle weapon.

"Before you do, there's something you should know," Aaroniero quickly said aloud, her eyes locking coolly at Rudbornn's.

Rudbornn, unnerved by how calm and collected his enemy was in the face of imminent death, couldn't help but ask, "What's that?"

"You made a grave error in making the assumption I couldn't do anything with my body immobile and my arms kept bound," She said with a smile, her words producing a now visible cloud of vapor. With every passing second, it appeared that during the time Rudbornn spoke of his predicament and origins, her complexion had turned remarkably paler and glossier. As if her skin was being replaced with a crystalline surface, she began to sparkle within the refraction of the artificial Sun's glare, "and that my Zanpakutō requires the blade to move in order to be used."

Before Rudbornn's eyes, he saw the unthinkable occur. The binding stocks began to be frozen over, becoming brittle and cracking by simply being in contact of the Shinigami's body. Webbing out in fraying fissures, the cracks began to become more severe as seconds ticked by, spreading out to even the chains holding down the ground mounted bindings holding her.

"**_I won't let you-!_**" Rudbornn shouted with defiance, swinging his sword down, succinctly causing the levitating guillotine to rocket downwards. Even as he watched the double-edged cleaver race downwards, he saw the entirety of his binding spell become completely encased in ice.

"HA!" Aaroniero exclaimed with a shout, flexing in an upward manner, shattering her bindings in an effortless shrug. In doing so, she evaded the sand eviscerating blade, plunging into the uneven grained earth before her feet, burrowing below the earth where it would be nullified in its effectiveness.

"Thanks for running your mouth," Aaroniero said with a cheeky grin, taking time to exhale calmly, her visage slowly returning the warmth back to her complexion, "if you hadn't given me so much time, I wouldn't have been able to lower my core temperature to a level that have frozen your spell. If you had just followed up with your capture of me, you probably could have killed me. Probably..."

At the moment, Rudbornn couldn't speak. He could only let out long grated breaths, sending puffs of steam between his skeletally displayed rows of teeth. And for the first time since their encounter, a purple gleam emerged behind his empty sockets, glowing with apparent indignant anger.

"**_Well played, Shinigami,_**" He spoke with a seething breath, followed by a grated snarl, "**_you succeeded in escaping death's door. However, you've only delayed the inevitable. I stake my reputation that you'll die when I unleash the full brunt of my power upon you!_**"

"Go ahead," Aaroniero responded confidently, holding Sode no Shirayuki in a two-handed kendo stance, "I'll crush you at your best. Then you'll see the true gap between us and what makes you special insignificant!"

At the mention of last few words, Rudbornn couldn't help but laugh. Holding his sword in a horizontally aloft manner, the Arrancar rebuked his enemy openly, "**_That confidence of yours is misplaced. Allow me to show you the error of your folly!" _**

What came next would be a brief flare of his Reiatsu. Bathed in a dark violet light, hints of darkness clinging to his frame, it sent waves of malevolent pressure within the wind that billowed from his person. Then, with a single visible gleam in both of his eye sockets, the transformation occurred.

"**_Grow, Árbol!_**" He enunciated in a deep, presenting manner. Once he had done so, the sword transformed into the shape of a stark white lightning bolt, being composed of solid metallic bone. Yellow colored roots wrapped around his right arm all the way up to his shoulder while grey hued roots as thick as his torso spiraled down into the sand below. Finally, four jagged electric shaped branches stretched out of his right shoulder, displaying a number of familiar looking skulls along its surface.

As the roots dug into the ground, his body began to rise upwards, assuming a towering stance overhead the Shinigami adversary. Waving his newly shaped weapon offhandedly, Rudbornn said with bemusement, "**_You once said earlier that you've disposed of my minions. I believe you underestimate the true essence of my Calaveras. Behold!_**"

What appeared before Aaroniero's eyes caused her mouth to hang open agape with morbid fascination. The skulls began to spew out white goop from the underside, stretching and contorting into shapes akin to humanoids. What followed later was the manifestation of clothes and facial features, dropping the newly created bodies of the creatures that were dropped like demented offsprings off a product line. Standing upward, the four marched onward in front of their creator, while new skulls quickly took their place and began manufacturing more.

"**_My Calaveras are the byproduct of my power to create. It is the reason why I, the 61st Arrancar of Lord Aizen's Army, was given a title among all the other Numeros who aren't of Espada Class,_**" Rudbornn declared, pointing his jagged tipped weapon before her, as another four dropped down to join those who now stand in front of his gnarled form. "**_you may have defeated the Noveno and Séptima, but you will go no further. Your mayhem in Las Noches ends here, at the hands of my infinite army!_**"

* * *

While the battle of Legion Spawning Arrancar ensued against the Shinigami imposter, the fight between former superior and subordinate raged on. The intensity of their many exchanged filled the air. Broad double-headed scythe met katana, producing shockwaves that rattled the ground and produced showers of sparks with every impact.

The result of the continuous conflict showed upon the body of the Quinto Espada. Bleeding profusely from many lacerations across his arms and chest, it appeared as if Nelliel had gotten past his guard many a time. Bruises placed across splotches of visible skin that hadn't been cut were seen across his chest and limbs respectively. Even his spoon shaped hood was halfway blown off, the result of another well placed Cero by Nelliel herself.

Yet, despite all of these injuries, Nnoitra looked uninhibited in continuing his assault at his loathsome rival. Swinging his blade in with both hands downwards, the inner crescent edge grinding down against Nelliel's upraised sword held now by both of her hands. The sight of her forced to her knees in a squatted stance brought a overbite smile to the Arrancar's face, revelling in seeing her pushed down by his own power.

"What's wrong, Nelliel?!" He jeered, eye glaring down at her passively stoic eyes. "not effortlessly beating me now, are ya?! Was that all talk or are you out of shape from not fighting all of these years?!"

Nelliel didn't respond vocally. She simply grimaced, though if it was by the pressure of her enemy's blade or something on her mind, Nnoitra couldn't read. The fact she was so unreadable furthered his anger at the female warrioress.

"You still think you're better than me, even when I'm getting the best of you?!" Nnoitra shouted incredulously, his eye widening with abstract rage. Rearing back his weapon, he thrust it back down towards her sword, finding it only to strike the sand as her form disappeared within a burst of high speed. Looking up, he'd see her crouched form rise a handful of meters away from his front, her bangs no concealing her stoic gaze. If Nnoitra cared to analyze her expression, one would say it looked mournful.

"You're always so damned proud of yourself," Nnoitra growled, retracting his weapon from the ground, sneering at her with his Zanpakutō held aloft in his right hand while he waved his left hand for emphasis. "following me around, making sure I'd be kept an eye on, seeing me as a lowly beast! You remember when you called me that?! I've never forgotten all those things you said to me, and how you viewed me as nothing more than an inferior who needed to be looked after by one so higher than me!"

Thrusting his weapon pointedly in her direction, Nnoitra visibly twitched with bloodthirst for the woman that stood not but a handful of distance away. "I've gotten stronger, and built up my powers for one goal. To surpass what you used to be. And yet here you are, perfectly intact and just the way I remember you. Now I have a chance to truly show you what those years of your absence has done for me and how little it has done for you!"

Throwing his weapon up into the air, the Arrancar began to howl with maniacal joy, spinning it by the chain attached to his waist. With every revolution the weapon made in the air, an increase of twisting friction the air currents had. Siphoned around in a circle until a dust twister revolved around the two of them, Nelliel continued to look forlorn and unreadable as he spun his weapon above his head.

"DIE!" Nnoitra yelled out, hurtling his chain downwards, sending his rotating double-headed scythe towards Nelliel's form.

It was during the high velocity thrust that Nnoitra noticed the blur of motion Nel's person became. Leaping above the hurtling weapon, she flipped forward until the chain stretched out at its limit, the blade cleaving a good amount of grained landscape behind her with its momentum. With her landing, she landed atop the chain and planted her sword in the middle of the links holding it, pinning the weapon's hold from the owner.

As Nnoitra stared briefly with confusion, he returned the glare at her for moving so gracefully out of the path of his weapon. It made him feel sick just seeing her act so cold and detached from his rants. It was like she wasn't even aware he had a vendetta against her.

Then, she spoke.

"You're such a child, Nnoitra," Nelliel said with a low tone.

"WHAT?!" Nnoitra howled out.

"Even after all this time, you refused to mature. I cannot understand your destructive mentality, nor your abhorrence of compassion and mercy," Nelliel explained, her eyes finally raising to lock onto Nnoitra's singular one. "even as I fight you, as I keep my hand from ending your life, you don't have a desire to listen to reason. It seems there is no other recourse but the action I have to regrettably take."

"What are you getting at you-?!" Nnoitra began to ask when he suddenly felt a dramatic spike of Reiatsu, coming straight off Nelliel's person. There was no exhale of Reishi, no distilling of the land or crumbling of the ground beneath her feet. It was simply a sudden incline of power, as if it was lying in wait until this moment to show itself. And the sensation of its visible warping properties brought beads of sweat to crawl down Nnoitra's scalp. "-you...you were holding back this whole time?!"

Nelliel didn't respond. Instead a current of pink light began to swirl around her sword, the essence seeming to be empowered by the very land around it. Grains of sand, the ambient atmosphere, and even the wind began to twirl around and funnel towards her blade. The sudden sight of the sword's condensed Reiatsu force caused Nnoitra's eye to expand with dreadful alarm.

"You've left me no choice, Nnoitra," Nelliel said in a low monotone.

"DAMN YOU, WITCH!" Nnoitra howled out, pulling the chain violently, causing it to snap under the weight of Nelliel's sword. Seeing this, the Arrancar rapidly vaulted and leaped for his scythe, disregarding the chain links he now untied from his person. By the time the pole handle was in both of his hands, he returned his sight to see Nelliel already moving towards his proximity.

He'd swing as she did, yet in the flash of light, only he could feel pain.

"GAAAAAAUGH!" Nnoitra exclaimed with outright pain, as a diagonal geyser of blood ejected from his chest. This would be synchronized by the forward flip of his bifurcated top end of his Zanpakutō somersaulting forward away leaving a steaming trail in its tumbling wake. The wound, contrasting the first cut that followed many, would be much deeper and cause the staunch Arrancar to heave with every breath he took.

"You can fight no longer, Nnoitra," Nelliel said declaratively, swinging her blade to the side, disposing of the flecks of blood clinging to the edge of her sword. "if you allow Tesra to tend to your wound, you may survive. But if you continue exerting yourself, you will die."

"You...stupid...bitch!" Nnoitra grunted aloud, wheezing as he raised his weapon above his head, "whatever made you think...that this fight...is over?!"

Nelliel's eyes widened, suddenly seeing a demented golden color of Reiatsu emanate from his person. The ground stirred around his feet at the sudden build-up of Reishi, swirling around his soles and soon billowing out to produce a continuous projection of wind. The ground quaked and the air distorted with such intense power being unleashed, showing that there was some merit to the Quinto's words.

Realizing what it could mean, however, Nelliel reached out and shouted with warning with eyes opened wide, "Nnoitra-!"

"**_PRAY,_**" He uttered gutturally, a bloody smile stretched ear to ear across his maniacal face, "**_SANTA TERESA!_**"

Retracting her hand, Nelliel backpedaled away at the last moment before a colossal wind barreled over the ground she once stood upon. The brilliant blaze of yellow colored Reiatsu thrummed over the landscape. Nel stared with abstract horror, at what was unleashed before her eyes.

"Idiot, I tried to warn you!" Nelliel thought with her teeth biting down into her lower lip.

As suddenly as the winds came, they vanished along with the Reiatsu created light. In the spectrum of haze created from the release, it appeared as if a crescent moon was pointing upright. When the smoke effectively cleared, one could see Nnoitra's prided Ressureccion in all of its glory. Standing tall with six arms, each one holding a behemoth crescent shaped scythe, Nnoitra's left vacant eye that revealed his Hollow hole complemented the pair of horns jutting out of his skull at irregular angles and lengths.

With a wide gleaming smile, Nnoitra couldn't help but chuckle, finding that all of his wounds, save for the most recent one had been healed. The scar was fittingly on display over his exposed chest, as if it was more of a trophy and testament to his refusal to die. It made him savor the release of power he had now, and the look on Nelliel's face at seeing it.

"It's been awhile since you've seen my Ressureccion, hasn't it, Nelliel?" Nnoitra asked rhetorically, looking onwards with a pleased expression. He began clenching and moving his arms with emphasis. "I've increased the arms I can manifest since last time. There'll be no way that you can get past me now, not even with your great speed."

Bowing her head, Nel sighed with resignation. Raising her blade in a horizontal alignment, she placed her free hand behind the flat of her Zanpakutō, whispering lowly, "I didn't want to use this unless I absolutely had to. Resuming my original state so soon when using this might exhaust me..."

"Go ahead!" Nnoitra goaded with his smile intact, grinding his scythes together in a provocative manner. "I ain't afraid of you or your Released Form! I'm invincible when Santa Teresa is activated!"

Without further ado, Nelliel breathed out in a solemn tone, "**Declare, Gamuza!**"

A brief elliptical light shined across her blade, obscuring Nnoitra's sight of her weapon. What came next would be an earth-shattering release of pink-bordered white light, rolling in a spherical manner that grinded and tore apart the earth. Such fierce winds would be enough to make Nnoitra squint and raise his blades in a protective manner. The sheer weight and raise of Reiatsu wouldn't be lost to him, as his brow would project a bead of sweat by what he felt.

A swing of the arm later, and Nelliel's true form was revealed. Her scarred mask, now a helmet devoid of the crack, wrapped around her her emerald mane covered head. A white armored pair of pauldrons was mounted over her shoulders, with a series of identical pieces of armor plating wrapped around black linen material over her limbs, ending with a pair of finger covering white gauntlets. The rest of her body, from the waist down, was a brown furred centauress body, complete with a black tail and two pairs of hooves. Her Zanpakutō, now in her right hand, appeared to be a double-sided corkscrew shaped lance.

"_The scar on her mask closed up,_" Nnoitra noted with a scowl, seeing only a few teeth of the mask fragment missing in its released state, "_she really is back to full power._"

"Remember what I say from this point," Nelliel declared aloud, earning her a glance by Nnoitra, "you brought this upon yourself!"

* * *

**The White Citadel, The Communications Hub**

Gin had been quite amused with what was unfolding.

Having taken the liberty of monitoring the ongoings of the invaders' progress, he had been tracking each and every battle to the best of his ability. Each one showed progression in strength on most of their parts. Uryu Ishida showed more tact and better tools befitting his named heritage. Ichigo Kurosaki has better tamed his Hollow powers. And Rukia Kuchiki had dealt with her severe handicap of fighting such a nefarious foe.

"_Aaroniero had never been one to play it fair,_" Gin thought with a thin lipped grin. Just as soon as he had felt the Synchronized Cognition broadcast from the dying Aaroniero, he soon checked the camera angles around his quarters. Much to his dismay, it appeared Aaroniero had removed all surveillance devices from within his halls, making only the vague outline of his deceased form as much confirmation to backup the mental projection's authenticity.

Then he noticed Rukia's battles soon after. While it appeared she was heading towards one of her friends to heal them, she knelt above the defeated Privaron whom had been dealt with by her own comrade's hands. Curious, Gin watched her put a hand onto the Arrancar's chest and then proceeded to, for lack of a better word, eviscerate his body and cause it to disappear.

"_What the Hell?_" Gin thought with a blink of the eyes, his crimson irises gleaming with bafflement at the phenomena that had transpired. He'd watch further, witnessing Zommari Rureaux engage in mortal combat with her. Impressed with her fighting style's improvement since her fight, what little he saw of it, with Aaroniero, he'd then briefly note how Zommari's expression changed to fear and stark realization just prior to his death.

While he possessed no audio, it appeared as if Rukia looked down at the corpse, disdaining it as if she knew it. Kneeling down, he began to watch the two halves of the body become consumed in what he could only see was a tendril maw emanating from her left hand. As she proceeded to stand over Chad's body, pondering as if to consume him as well, the pieces began to fit in Gin's mind.

"_The only reason Aaroniero was inducted into the ranks of the Espada and has remained consistently Novena for all these years was because he ate that Hollow. The one that kept its shape, form, and the essence of whatever it devoured. I forget the name, but I don't forget it had the ability to merge its spiritual essence with anyone, even Shinigami. If Aaroniero kept that ability then there's no denying the possibility that he could merge his own essence into a new host body, and leave one he deems as useless or too weak,_" Gin concluded with a hand stroking his chin, watching Rukia now bend over and consume Chad's own body. With morbid fascination, he smiled as he watched the final parts of his body slither into her hand that reverted back into its original shape. Chuckling, he watched her leave and move across the sandy wastes with haste, obvious to him that she sought new victims to chow down on. "it seems Aaroniero's pulled the wool over all of our eyes. I doubt even Lord Aizen knows about this deception, what with his fixation on Ichigo-"

"Gin," Kaname's voice interrupted his train of thought, causing the said albino to turn over and stare at him with a irritated visage. "Lord Aizen is asking about the status of Las Noches."

Sighing, Gin waved off towards the blind colleague of his, glad that he was unable to see the screens as he was able to keep on the channel of interest instead of hastily changing it. "Nothing new to report. No Gargantas opening up within the enclosure and no reinforcements to speak of yet."

"I see," Kaname said with understanding. Quick to follow up with this information, Kaname turned his heels on Gin and spoke to him over his shoulder, "in that case, Lord Aizen said you shouldn't waste time. He's been noticing the drop of several Reiatsus, and what he can only conclude will be the eventual disappearance of a few more. He needs you to go retrieve the Vanguard so we don't exhaust the lion share of our forces."

"Oh? You want me to get them?" Gin asked with perplexion.

"Is there a problem?" Kaname asked, halfway turning towards Gin.

"Well...why don't _you_ go get them?" Gin asked with a sheepish smile, pointing his hand towards his associate.

"Lord Aizen needs me elsewhere. This is your assignment from him," Kaname answered bluntly.

"But I don't like it down there. It's not a pleasant place and I don't think they like me," Gin scrunched up his nose, showing his detestment to the idea.

"Are you refusing an order?" Kaname inquired pointedly.

Sighing heavily, Gin massaged the bridge of his nose, using his free hand to wave off his comrade, "No, I can handle it. Just lettin' ya know I don't like it."

"Good," Kaname said with satisfaction, turning crisply to exit the room and back down the hall whence he came, "Lord Aizen will be pleased."

Groaning, Gin stood up and glanced at the monitor he had been watching. A secret smile stretched over his face, cloaking the look of knowing in his crimson glinting eyes. He'd hum to himself as his thoughts gave him newfound amusement, "_Things are going to be quite busy around here. I can't wait to see how this plays out!_"

* * *

**A/N:** Whew! Done and wow this took longer than I thought. Not to write, mind you, but my mind hit so many roadblocks along the way. I just wish it didn't take until NOW to complete it. But I DIGRESS it is finished and I am glad.

First, I want to thank Lastation for previewing and helping me spot check some errors. I wouldn't have gotten it to such a good quality without him. So a round of applause to him for helping make this chapter even better than intended :)

I hope what you saw, my additions to Rudbornn's abilities and my changing of the outcome to Nnoitra's initial fight with Nelliel, is to your liking. I thought that Nelliel was the most mistreated of the potential badasses that Kubo created. Much like how there was so much potential for Aaroniero, Nelliel's potential lied in her becoming a permanent member of the team and kept her from being limelighted as a all-powerful badass Arrancar.

Hope you all liked it and I hope you can contain your excitement for the next chapter of **A Predator Among Us!**


	4. The Liar, The Lancer, And The Leader

**A Predator Among Us**

* * *

"Seriously wish Kaname came down here instead of me," Gin muttered, treading down a set of dark stairs, leading into underworks within the White Palace. Dark torches cast a dim, golden-red glow along the walls in diagonally aloft positions. Unlike the majority of the palaces constructed the walls and ceilings of the structure's underbelly looked more like limestone and granite than concrete imbued with marble and tiles. The normally quiet footsteps the Lieutenant of Aizen made echoed and were made much more apparent, mingling with the variety of ominous chilling groans and growls lingering within.

The lavender haired Shinigami crossed a dark threshold, noting the audible sloppy smacks of someone eating. He peered briefly through the slim opening of the doorway, noting a large pile of Hollow and Arrancar carcasses. A gargantuan silhouette of Yammy Llargo was seen, gnawing upon a familiar Arrancar servant, causing the man to back away slowly.

"Geeze, Yammy's snacking away on our men while everyone else is fightin'. Not exactly what I'd call fair," Gin commented with a sigh, traversing further into the Palace's basement.

It wasn't until he came to the end of the hall that he looked up. There standing in front of him was a door of immense proportions, easily equalling a palace room's gateway. Staring down at him, protruding from the door itself appeared to be the face of a traditional Oni, with fangs bared and eyes gleaming with malice. Beads of sweat nervously crawled down his scalp as he approached the intimidating piece of architecture.

"_Why did Captain Aizen make such a scary door for the Vanguard's quarters?_" Gin thought with a glum expression.

"**_Commander Ichimaru,_**" A voice rumbled out, catching Gin's attention.

Looking forward Gin saw a particularly large bodied Arrancar standing guard over the door's entrance. A skull laden pole handle leading up to a executioner's double-headed axe leaned over his left shoulder, its razor edges tapping the door's face. His face below a pair of steely grey eyes was entirely covered by sullen white mask, jutting out a good foot from the skull with bared teeth. Most of his body was visible, with a hole expanding over his left midriff while the number 71 was invertedly tattooed over his sternum. What passed as armor was a pair of leathern shoulder pads, a white bottom tunic, and studded leggings matching equally rough appearing gloves wrapped up to the elbow.

"_Sin Nombre Parias, the Seventy First Arrancar,_" Gin remembered, cuing his trademark smile to slide up his pale complexioned face, "_what a cruel name given to such a lonely fellow. Sticking him down here with such a dreary job I almost forgot he existed. I don't envy him in the slightest though..._"

"**_What brings you down here?_**" Sin inquired dutifully, standing up to his full height of eight feet, looking down at his superior with harsh eyes gleaming from his bald headed visage. "**_is Lord Aizen wishing an update on the prisoners?_**"

"Yes," Gin said with a nonchalant tone, standing up unafraid of the larger Arrancar, staring at him with a thin-eyed gaze, "he wishes to mobilize the Vanguard. I am here to round them up."

"**_Hmph,_**" Sin huffed with disgust, stepping aside so his superior officer to approach the door, "**_if you ask me-_**"

"But I didn't," Gin retorted cheekily.

"**_They're unfit to be used for any military operation,_**" Sin continued with insistence, slamming the pommel of his axe to the ground to create a loud echo in the dark hall.

Forming a number of indistinct hand signs, Gin chuckled in response to Sin's apprehension, "This is hardly a complex task for 'em to do. They just need to mop up some intruders who managed to enter Las Noches. Lord Aizen doesn't wish to have his best men exert themselves on such a gruesome and mundane task."

"**_Intruders? So that's what those Reiatsus I felt!_**" Sin exclaimed with shock. Hands clenched into fists, wrapping around his axe fervently, brandishing it in front of his superior as he took a step forward, "**_let me deal with them! You can never trust these traitors to do the job properly!_**"

"Oh, I don't think it'll be a problem if you came along," Gin said with an agreeing nod, finishing the last hand sign. A crimson triangle of light formed over his clasped hands, expanding into a pyramid shaped key. With a splaying motion of his hands, the prism of energy imbued itself into the open mouth of the Oni, causing the onyx hued door to glow a dark burgundy and its eyes to burn a red fire. Soon after the mouth closed as well as the eyes, the door itself rising up towards the ceiling, leaving the path to the rows of evenly spaced cells on display.

"**_Be wary, Commander,_**" Sin spoke in a low tone, knowing the inmates may be listening as they treaded forward, "**_even though they've been separated from their Zanpakutō, they've been doing nothing but presiding within their cells and feasting on the provided provisions. There's no telling how agitated or feral they are after so many years-_**"

"I think I can manage," Gin interrupted in a dismissive fashion.

Passing by a number of cells that all held an identical if not spartan crafting, the two's footsteps were all that was heard within the Vanguard's hold. Each had an arch frame over seamless barriers, much like the main gate that remained closed behind them. Triple digits enamored over the hingeless doors, describing all you needed to know of each inmate being held against their will.

Approaching the farthest one, embedded into the end of the hall and making up a largest of the cell barriers. Emblazoned were the numbers 101 in stark white, with a faded sheen from prolonged existence in the dank corridor. When the two stopped, Sin gripped his axe tightly and looked cautiously at his superior. Fearlessly the lavender haired Shinigami walked up to the door and placed his palm against its smooth surface. A bright emerald light in the shape of a skull lit up and stretched over where his hand laid against. Turning it to the right, a succinct sound of old locks began to retract, causing the door to sink into the ground below.

"Hello?" Gin spoke invitingly, eyes peering into a dark space with little to no form of light. A drab cloaked silhouette could be seen crouching from within, unmoving and not registering the movement outside. Whether it could tell that something or someone spoke to it or not was too difficult to tell.

"**_You're wasting your time, Commander Ichimaru,_**" Sin said in a low growl, his eyes glaring at the being held from within, "**_that one hasn't moved let alone spoke in all the time I spent watching over these treacherous ingrates. It's best to forget about it entirely._**"

"Yo! I got something to ask of you!" Gin cupped his hands over his mouth, raising his voice loud enough to ring within the dark enclosed cell.

"**_Commander, you-!_**"

Anything that either of them could muster up another verbal reply, a blur of crimson overlapping drab grey flourished past the open cell and beside their flanks. A swift jettisoning punch thrust out by Sin's part, tearing part of the cloak of the escaping prisoner off but failing to meet its mark. Raising his axe over his head, Sin aimed to cut his charge down, but hesitated when he saw the position it was in.

"Try it," A seething voice snarled, as red eyes glared from the corner of its visage, "and the Commander dies!"

Gin felt what seemed like a sharp piece of carved flooring placed uncomfortably against his neck. Worst yet, he felt his right hand gripped by a strong and calloused hand by his captor, keeping him from reaching his own weapon with ease. Yet despite the predicament he was placed within, his smile seemed to stretch farther instead of diminishing at the thought of being attacked in such a fashion.

"**_Do so and you'll need a morgue instead of a cell, traitor!_**" Sin rumbled out, pulling his axe back in a daring stance, appearing ready to cut through his own superior to get to his prisoner.

"Now Now, no need to be hasty," Gin said in a nonchalant tone, smile very much intact, "our charge here doesn't want to cause any trouble. Our little prisoner is just a bit jarred about a summons being made in person after so many years without as much as a peep from us. That is why you aren't such a lively person, _Rana Zolinder?_"

Indeed, with top partition of the cloak ripped apart by the Warden's behemoth fist, a long gout of crimson locks flourished down a partially exposed back. While parts of her were less than dignified, the shadows of the hall and her proximity to Gin kept her visually decent. The curvaceous Arrancar easily stood a few inches taller than her superior, with a jaw-framed mask fragment that rested sharp teeth around her jawline just below her lower lip and lower ear. The only real notable thing telling of her Hollow origin was a single hole the size of a golf ball residing at the center of her throat, going all the way from front to back. Fiery eyes glared at Gin's right side while keeping a good peripheral mark at Sin, ensuring she wouldn't be taken off guard by either of them.

"What the Hell are you doing down here? It's been fifty years since I've been thrown down here along with what few comrades that have shared my fate of isolation!" Rana hissed angrily, not letting up the pressure of her shiv against the Shinigami's throat. "does my Lord wish to make more of a fool of me?! He had promised us Espada, the real Espada, a place by his side as he led us to greatness! I know how you viewed us as obsolete in comparison to their ilk! I'll be damned before I follow any Shinigami, least of all the likes of you!"

"See here, Miss Zolinder," Gin said in a cool, even tone, not bothering to jerk or struggle. "what you believe and what had happened is entirely in the past..."

"Exactly, pray tell, can that be?! How does imprisoning me and branding me with a damning rank of Privaron suddenly disappear?! I'm curious to see what clever trick you have in store for me and anyone else you came down to beguile into your sick game, _Commander_ Ichimaru!" Rana sneered, forcing the shiv tighter against Gin's neck, earning a trickle of blood to escape the lacerated surface.

"Two Espada have met their untimely end by intruders. _Shinigami_ intruders," Gin emphasized slowly, his grin toothily spread so that Rana could see his visage. Hearing her grip slacken significantly and her breath hitch, the Lieutenant of Aizen continued. "mere hours ago a group of Shinigami have spearheaded into Las Noches with the intent of rescuing a certain someone named Orihime Inoue, someone vital to Lord Aizen's plans. During their efforts they've killed a number of Arrancars and mortally wounded those who couldn't stand up to their martial might. Three of the Privaron Espada are among those casualties along with two current Espada. Another two are predicted to die in less than half an hour. Have I piqued your interest yet?"

For the longest time Rana's breathing dimmed from outright rage to curiosity blended with disbelieving shock. Sure they had their share of adversaries, but nothing ever testing their mettle against the Gotei 13. To hear that the brothers of hers that chose to serve Aizen as meager guards and dirty deeded assassins fell to them caused her anger be redirected to her primary hated species. Shinigami, a race she and her comrades had faced in the past long before Aizen introduced himself as the newfound de facto power of Hueco Mundo.

"Tell me," Rana said with a cooler edge, her eyes narrowing at Gin's slightly turned jaw, "if I...no, if we Privaron deal with these intruders, will we be welcomed back as Espada? Will Lord Aizen pardon our past transgressions?"

"That depends on your ability to complete your mission, doesn't it?" Gin inquired cheekily, turning his head over his shoulder to open a single blue eye to gleam back at Rana's own fiery iris.

Releasing her hold on Gin, Privaron Espada backed up a step and examined her commander with a more stoic visage. Her drab cloak hung loosely over her form, held slightly closer with a single free hand over her exposed bosom. Dropping the shiv onto the ground, she briefly glanced at the croc-faced Arrancar before returning it back at the serpentine grinning Shinigami general.

While Sin did little to relax his own stance, Gin turned upon his heel and waved his arms out, "Glad to see you've accepted! I'm glad we can move past our differenc-"

"Don't mistake my acceptance of this task by Lord Aizen that I have forgiven your betrayal of my loyalty," Rana said harshly, her eyes furrowed once more, though this time accompanied with a malicious smile, "get in my way, and I'll cut you to ribbons. Commander or not, you're one of the Shinigami I despise the most. Don't forget that, Ichimaru!"

"Ah, fair enough," Gin sighed, shrugging with resignation.

"Before I clean up the mess your _superior_ Espada have made, I'm going to need you to release my own brethren whom you imprisoned here accordingly," Rana ordered, her voice assuming a more authoritative and crisp volume. "all of our Zanpakutō will naturally need to be returned to us to make us fully efficient. Once they're all debriefed, rearmed, and assess the enemy's strength we can move out and take them down swiftly."

"Sounds like a plan," Gin nodded with an approving grin.

"**_Commander!_**" Sin shouted, causing Rana to side glance him annoyingly while Gin simply turned his head. Swinging his axe towards the previously incarcerated Arrancar, he flourished around for angered emphasis as he shouted, "**_you cannot allow this barbarian to roam free! If you allow her and her cohorts to be given free liberties they may try to perform_** **another _Coup!_**"

"Don't worry your shiny head, Sin," Gin said with a light-hearted tone, pointing at him with his left most wiry finger, "you said you wanted to tag along, right? I'm sure you don't want to let your charges out of your sight. If only to keep an eye on them, you may assist them in their mission and act as you see fit. After all, that is the task that Lord Aizen designated you with, hasn't it?"

For a few moments, Sin looked perplexed by Gin's insinuation. Seeing a satisfied smile stretch across Rana's face, he realized he had been played from the start. His eagerness to leave and prove himself had led him to be drawn in with the most disorganized squad of soldiers. The fact he knew they'd like nothing more than to kill him when his back is turned unsettled him that he was being dragged into it by being in their midst.

Tightening his hold on his axe, he rested it upon the ground and dutifully bowed his head to Gin, "**_As you wish, Commander. I shall do my best to keep these fools in line and ensure they do the task that has been ordained by Lord Aizen._**"

"How cute to see the Warden playing lapdog to milord's every whim," Rana jabbed with a toothy grin, causing a visible flinch and an angry flash behind the croc Arrancar's eyes.

"Please try to get along with him. He's been quite bored being cooped up watching over you, and I'd like for him to at least stretch his legs this once. Keep the mission in mind and you won't even know he's there," Gin insisted with a wave of his hands.

Glancing over at the substantially taller and muscle bound Warden, Rana's doubt was clearly seen by the dry look her eyes projected. Promptly rolling her eyes, she turned her head to face Gin directly, glaring outright with a hiss in her voice, "There is one last thing I need before I do anything."

"Hm?"

"I need a change of clothes. These rags are hardly suited for battle other than to be ogled at by distasteful creatures like you," Rana said bluntly, her face contorting into one of disgust at seeing Gin's decadent grin stretch further.

"Why," Gin began to say, "I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about..."

"Fuck off, Commander!" Rana snarled viciously, turning her exposed midriff away from him, still projecting her heated glare back at him over her shoulder, "get me my sword and my damned clothes!"

"I think you and I are going to get along just fine, my dear," Gin chuckled at the infuriated Privaron Arrancar.

* * *

_**Chapter **__**4 - **__**The Liar, The Lancer, And The Leader**_

* * *

"_So this is what it felt like to see my Glotoneria. Damn, I was scary,_" Aaroniero thought as the parallels between her fight with Rukia and her with Rudbornn's were hard to miss. Both could stare down at a prey as if they are beneath them, using abilities that didn't require all-out physical confrontation. The very visage of skull-mounted bodies being sprouted forth like plants from a gnarled white tree from branches resembling jagged lightning bolts sent chills running up and down her spine.

Shaking her head, her prolonged gaze upon her enemy distracted her for only a few moments from the real problem. With a row of Calaveras marching towards her with an unfazed resolve only a cross of machines and mindless killers would possess, they already formed into a formidably sized unit. With more on the way, grown from the twisted tree behind them, they could easily number a hundred in over a minute.

From simple observation, she realized just how easily out of control this battle could become.

"**_What's the matter, Shinigami?!_**" Rudbornn crowed out in his warped tone, waving his arms from his high altitude perch, "**_are you in awe of the power of creation Lord Aizen has bestowed upon me?! Tremble and know your own powerlessness, Rukia Kuchiki!_**"

"You sure like to talk," Aaroniero commented with a sneer, spreading her legs apart to lower her form into a squat. With her sword held in a inverted manner next to her right cheek, a bristle of cerulean white light emanated from her person. With a slight bend of the knees, she jettisoned herself towards her enemy with sword held in front of her visage, "it's getting annoying!"

As before when she upped her Reiatsu output, the Calaveras couldn't strike her rapidly speeding form. Each time she flourished near their blades' reach, she whisked out of the way with a shimmering burst of Shunpo. To and fro her beige cloaked frame swiftly accelerated past the dozens of soldier crops towards the base of the tree-like body of their originator. Leaping upwards with a powerful burst of air, sending a wave of dispersed sand behind her, she sailed upwards till she reached Rudbornn's person.

With a smirk donned upon Aaroniero, she reared her sword back to subsequently launch a cutting arc towards Rudbornn's head. That smirk would vanish as the released Arrancar raised his bolt-shaped sceptre to deflect the icy sword, dissipating a wave of frozen air upon contact.

"**_Attacking the General before disposing of his troops,_**" Rudbornn murmured out, pushing back Aaroniero's blade with an effortless backstroke, "**_is unwise!_**"

Upon hearing this, Aaroniero felt the rush of wind among the flurries of static, the telltale sign of Sonido deploying from a number of Calaveras. Dipping down to avoid a number of sword thrusts, she quickly reversed her grip on her Sode no Shirayuki. Turning upon her heels she spun her pale blade in repulsing thrusts, forcing her guard to knock the incoming barrage of swords to be sent off kilter and away from her person. Then with a graceful twirl she cut through the limbs of their arms and slashed their midriffs open in two wide cutting fissures of chilling Reishi.

The sudden sound of Ceros priming behind her caused her eyes to widen upon looking her shoulder. There, half-formed Calaveras hung from the branches, pointing their swords forward to form ten Ceros from their respective branches. The collective of spheres all coiled in crackling tendrils that joined together at the end of Rudbornn's bolt sceptre.

"**_Dios Cero!_**" Rudbornn declared, unleashing a voluminous scaled Cero at Aaroniero. Shaped like a lightning bolt of violet hue, the energy crossed the gap at a speed that alarmed the Shinigami bodied Hollow. Her person appeared to be overtaken in an instant through the violet lit motion, thunderously launching into the horizon into a row of pillars the size of skyscrapers. Following connecting, the Dios Cero's blast levelled the structures effortlessly, creating a horizon glint of violet to overlap their proximate scenery. The shockwave caused an upheaval of sand and air, buffeting all the way back to the source of the Reishi discharge.

It was during the split second that Aaroniero had deployed her Shunpo Clone behind her -a skill she adapted from devouring Zommari-, that she landed amidst the twenty standing Arrancar soldiers. Sweat beaded on her scalp, eyes wide and filled with the understanding how close of a call her escape was. She warily examined the enemies surrounding her, soon joined by another ten that had helped fire the Cero.

"_That Cero's faster than any I've seen. I thought Bala was the only kind of Cero that moved that fast,_" Aaroniero thought with perplexion.

"**_You did well to dodge that Cero, Shinigami_**," Rudbornn commented in a laudable tone, observing as his soldiers surrounded her while another ten was constructed upon his branches, "**_however, I doubt you can keep up at that speed for an indefinite period._**"

"_If you only knew how much power I possessed,_" Aaroniero thought with a hidden scowl, turning around to hold her blade in a ready two handed stance. Judging by the cautious mannerisms of their circling steps, just outside of her sword's reach, they appeared to be prepared for her Zanpakutō's Tsukishiro technique. The sound of ten more feet dropping down to the ground caused her to grind her teeth with iration, "_I have to deal with them quickly before too many are on the field. But how do I stop them from being birthed continuously? I doubt I can just cut his Ressureccion down at the trunk, he'd attack me on sight. Without the aid of additional allies, I can't possibly match their numbers and tactics._"

It was then at the moment an idea dawned occurred, causing her eyes to widen and light up. The epiphany caused her to gape at such an obvious maneuver to be utilized in such a scenario. It was perfect!

However, the Calaveras appeared to had done their waiting long enough. A set of six rushed at high speed sprints, holding their swords aloft while they intended to perform a run-by slash at their enemy. Aaroniero ducked and parried gracefully, leaping around to perform a double spin kick to send a number of them tumbling across the sandy battlefield. Others grasped each other's forearms and performed a spinning top motion, creating many bodily whirlwinds, aiming to cut her down as they rushed at her in such an unorthodox manner.

As dust kicked during their dozen man employment of Blade Storms, Aaroniero's body flickered in a moment of disjointed appearance. Following that her body seemed to disperse into six places, appearing before each spinning pair of Calaveras simultaneously. In synchronization, glowing blades filled with Sōkatsui energy cut through the spinning blades and their targeted two rotating bodies with ease. Limbs and lacerated torsos steaming from contact of searing edges sent them into jumbled heaps.

Without skipping a beat, the remaining dozens of Calaveras began rapid firing Bala at the Shunpo Clones. Pocketed concussive explosions rocked the sand in front of them, sending a number of sight obscuring pillars of ascending grains. Their prey deftly avoided by rushing forward in a tandem of Shunpos, using the misfires as cover to get closer to the wall of Calaveras defending their master.

Just as they reached the line of Calaveras, a damning flash of violet light overcame their midst, launched by a electrical Cero from Rudbornn's own sceptre. The blast sent his troops flailing back but eliminated the mass of charging Clones simultaneously.

Rudbornn looked upon the cloud of sand flowing up amidst his line of sight. Tilting his head left to right, he could see no movement but could feel a suppression of Reiatsu in the air. She was close by and he could feel that she was hiding in the sand cloud, avoiding his troops below and starting another wave of attacks. Feeling another set of ten Calaveras drop from his branches, he could hear faint bell-like sounds from within the clouded airspace not but a dozen meters away.

"**Hakuren!**" Declared beyond his vision's reach, parting the cloud of sand to reveal a rumbling stormhead of frigid snow.

"_**Predictable,**_" Rudbornn murmured, raising his sceptre in front of his airspace, generating a conical wave of violet Reiatsu from his being. Doing so caused the pyre of rushing snow to rush past his body, leaving him untouched, only flowing past just a few hairs outside his yellow root covered torso. Lowering his sceptre, he examined the fully revealed Aaroniero, crouched in the middle of space at the same altitude as he. "**_I commend your intelligence and tact, Shinigami, but I'm afraid you're reaching the end of your rope._**"

_"_As if!" Aaroniero jeered out with a smile, standing erect while holding her sword aloft by her side, "if anyone should be finished right now, it's you!"

"**_Do tell,_**" Rudbornn chuckled lowly, seeing his remaining Calaveras gather around her outside her sword's reach once more. So many of them were spaced out that a few were only a handful of meters away from his personal space. Waving his arms for emphasis at his small army, Rudbornn shouted out incredulously, "**_look around you, __Shinigami!__ You're surrounded by soldiers I can continue to spawn indefinitely! There is no escape for you!_**"

At this declaration the Calaveras squatted down and raised their swords menacingly. Each of them exuded a violet aura of Reiatsu, creating a dark atmosphere around surrounded Shinigami. It wasn't until the sword held aloft was practically dropped from her right hand did their attention avert down towards the falling weapon. A line of icy rope coiling around the ribbon flourished up from her open hand, grasped readily the moment it dropped to the sand below.

"**Some no Mai,**" Aaroniero enunciated solemnly, whipping out her ground prone blade in a circular fashion. Rising in a circular manner caused chilling winds to flail wildly, catching all of the proximate skull headed soldiers within its frigid grip. When a heavenly silver light began to be emitted within the atmosphere around them upon the seventh revolution passing by Aaroniero's right shoulder did the technique finally take place, "**Tsukishiro!**"

In that instant, a colossal sized icy pillar was created, catching all of the Calaveras within the blade's passing reach. All were imprisoned in its frigid embrace, quickly freezing their bodies and causing their physiology to become brittle and fragile. With dozens of webbed cracks spreading across the tall tower of frozen moisture, all of the bodies and the mass of frigid air dismantled before Rudbornn's eyes.

"_She extended the reach of her Tsukishiro by using an ice rope?!_" Rudbornn thought with shocked realization.

"I told you before," Aaroniero said amidst the epicenter of the collapsing ice tower, bathed in chilling vapor that wafted around their vicinity, "you're the one who's finished."

Huffing, Rudbornn waved a free hand with dismission, "**_Hardly. You destroyed my subordinates but there's always more. This display of power changes-!_**"

The succinct sound of brittle ice shattering near his arm caught his attention. Craning his skull affixed head to the left, he recoiled at what he saw. The branches, all over him were completely encased in ice. Partially formed skulls were already becoming brittle within their icy prisons, the feeble manufacturers of their bodies cut off by the frigid temperatures.

"**Shakkahō!**"

Aaroniero's shout returned Rudbornn's flinching turn back to face his opponent, just in time to see a crimson orb flung towards the base of tree-like body. With horror etched behind his stoic mask, he saw as the roots were shattered apart in a vibrant explosion, causing his body fall backwards along with the cracking branches aloft with his backside. Seeing the smug grin elapse over his enemy's face, however, did little to quell the fire of rage building within his being.

"**_SHINIGAMI!_**" Rudbornn howled with animalistic rage, swinging his sceptre in her direction, already lit with a blinding purple flash of Reishi. An instant later and a thunderous flash of a smaller Dios Cero was let loose, flowing forth in an erratic swift pace. Enough so that it caused Aaroniero's victorious visage to vanish and replaced with one of alarm.

Shimmering down below to the ground, Aaroniero would have time to see the air return back to a normal color scheme just prior to hearing loud thumps in the distance. Looking up from her crouched posture, her face contorted to one of disgust and disbelief.

"**_Don't you dare think I am incapable of fighting,_**" Rudbornn growled aloud, as four crooked roots jutted out from his partially ashen lower body, forming a quartet of jagged inhuman limbs. A wave of deep violet Reiatsu enveloped his person, causing the sand below to distend and spread out in a crushing manner. Widespread tendrils of purple-white Reishi snaked all about his person, showing the peak of his power being brought to the surface, "**_just because you destroyed my army!_**"

"Shit!" Aaroniero swore under her breath, rising up to hold her blade in a Kendo stance, "I didn't think he could move, let alone fight after dismembering his extraneous parts. Leave it to me to make stupid assumptions..."

Swinging a free hand in her direction, Rudbornn discharged a dozen marble sized orbs of purple colored Reishi. After jettisoning a handful of meters the spheres sped up at a rapid pace, blurring forth to leave purple hued light in their wakes. Seconds after passing over the sandy soil, concussive fissures of shredding force was seen, burrowing deep into the grained earth for twenty meters in depth.

"**Hadō #73,**" Aaroniero uttered upon backpedaling a good distance through Shunpo, clenching her sword hand over a unfurled free one with both wrists locked together. With a cerulean trail of fierce light created between her hands respectively, she shouted dramatically in its release, "**Sōren Sōkatsui!**"

As the five high velocity projectiles met a large wave of fiery Reishi, the collision would trigger an immediate detonation. Spouting upwards was a large pyre of orange-red flames, elliptically thrusting shockwaves to disembowel the grained landscape underneath along with searing waves of air pressure. Billowing out fiercely, it took a handful of seconds to expose the large crater caused by the two forces that were arrested and destroyed by mere contact.

Kicking off the earth, Aaroniero wasted no time taking the initiative of counter attack. Her body shimmered, replicating a number of duplicates as she charged the magnified distance between herself and her enemy. The series of Shunpos they all utilized made it increasingly difficult to gauge the authentic one as well as hit with a accurate attack from a distance.

This sight did little to dissuade the Arrancar.

"**_Defeating me is impossible,_**" Rudbornn rumbled out, raising his sceptre, igniting it with another gout of violet Reishi, "**_no matter what tactics, no matter how many numbers, no matter your strength it is futile. I am the Exequias, one who doesn't let a single prey escape. Your demise was guaranteed the moment we became opponents!_**"

"Your own arrogance is distorting that cool, rational head of yours, Arrancar!" Aaroniero shouted from afar, drawing ever-so closer to her nemesis, "perhaps this is why Aizen thought better than to name you an Espada!"

The verbal jab didn't go unheard. With a roar, Rudbornn swung his sceptre in a wide arc, discharging a continuous blaze of Dios Cero to trail across the sandy wastes. Having passed completely in front of the six Aaronieros, a violent eruption of combustible Reishi discharged in an overarching motion from where the Dios Cero had crossed. Such a infernal wall of crimson tongues was seen that Rudbornn could see little of the battlefield they had orchestrated in the past few minutes.

"**_You know nothing, invader!_**" Rudbornn cried out, swinging his sceptre wielding hand out in the direction of the flaming horizon, "**_don't speak as if you know Aizen's thoughts and will. He gave me this power and title. Placing doubt in my heart where there should be none is blasphemy. How dare you make me doubt my superior's wishes!_**"

A soft whooshing tap to Rudbornn's forward right momentarily caught his attention, followed by a glistening flash of golden light. Raising his weapon hand to bat it away, the light quickly ensnared his arm all the way up to his shoulder. Much to his horror it was the binding rope Kidō, _Hainawa_, having used from before.

"You pitiful fool," Aaroniero said lowly, sword held down at her side while her hand still held the Bakudo in her left, "I never told you to doubt Aizen. I just confirmed the doubts already buried in your discontented heart."

"**_You-!_**"

"**Shakkahō,**" Aaroniero whispered aloud, contrary to shouting her spells from before.

A crimson flash of light flowed up the chain that bound Rudbornn's arm, causing the entire limb to instantaneously combust in a violent explosion. With parts of his mask shattered from the force of such a blast, his entire being was knocked off balance, falling to the ground in a disjointed fragmented mess.

Heavily sighing, the Shinigami bodied Hollow rose to her full height and trotted slowly to the mutilated Arrancar's side. Already she could hear the choked wheezes from his cracked mask. The sight of a scorched cheek, previously hidden, shined a single onyx eye with grim knowing. A tear welled up within his eye, spilling over his charred flesh as he continued to gurgle for air.

"**_I have failed...,_**" Rudbornn flinched, his free arm shaking and his gloved hand gripping the sand with unbearable pain, "**_f-forgive me...Lord Aizen..._**"

"I almost feel sorry for you, pawn of Shinigami," Aaroniero said with a morose expression crossing her eyes, "but I can tell you now that your passing will serve a far greater calling than he ever promised. A goal that I aspire to change everything that is the laws of nature."

"**_W-What are you...saying?_**" Rudbornn queried, his eye turning to look at his better.

In the end, he wished he hadn't turned to look.

What had been a dainty, pretty hand was now a protuberance of a mouth shaped tentacle of dark pigmentation. It stuck out from the wrist and expanded, permeating a noxious scent that filled the air near him with a Reiatsu. A Reiatsu that wasn't Shinigami in the slightest, but-

"**_M-M-Master...Arruruerie?!_**" Rudbornn quivered with stark realization.

A quick flash of mucous covered flesh over a root-covered torso and it was done. Sickening crunches of compacted bone and cartilage, along with a good amount of blood and tissue was all absorbed into the ravenous limb. As the essence of Rudbornn had been fully devoured and assimilated into Aaroniero's being, her hand reverted to normalcy, and she stood up to examine herself of what she acquired.

"Your powers will assist my evolution greatly, Rudbornn," Aaroniero said with a proud smile, flashing her pearly white teeth with fascination.

As she pondered how best to test this new power, she realized she'd have to temporarily neutralize her body's Zanpakutō. Swinging her Sode no Shirayuki to the side, she sealed it to its original form, promptly sheathing it. Furrowing her brows with concentration, she clapped her hands together, and stood perfectly still. A vibrant violet light lapsed over her body, flourishing her cloak and Shikhakushō for long seconds as she summoned the newly acquired power.

Then, she spoke aloud in a solemn tone, as her pupils became slitted, "**Grow, Árbol!**"

Swiftly, four jagged branches grew forth from her cloaked right shoulder in an outward manner. Roots seemed to billow out and connect to the earth underneath her kama skirt, around her legs and into the sandy grains. She could feel the ripe Reishi currents that made up the land of Hueco Mundo pump into her organic floral parts and into the branches that hung by her body. It wouldn't be but a minute before the human shaped skulls began to form characteristics in exact likeness of her Shinigami body.

Detaching from the branches, four Calavera replicas of Rukia Kuchiki were made. She could sense and feel her own consciousness within each of the bodies. It was an omnipotent sensation, one she now emphasized with Rudbornn completely. It was as if she was in multiple places at once and could act accordingly without the strain of a single mind needing to multi-task.

"I guess there are no need to say anything since you are basically me," Aaroniero said with a low chuckle, mirrored by the others who felt the same. Resuming a more stoic expression, her pupil returned to normalcy as she retracted the branches and roots back into her body respectively. "though I'll need to be careful where I send you. These bodies I have retain exact same Reiryoku as I possessed fighting Rudbornn. Avoiding confrontation is key and scavenging the dead or dying Espada is critical."

Squatting onto the sand beneath her, she thrust both arms forward, placing the backs against each other. After a brief moment of concentration a vibrant light resembling a rainbow mingled with diamonds appeared before both hands. In a sweeping manner, a curtain of light flourished over her body. Seconds later the field of refracting colors disappeared along with her body.

"_Bakudo #26, Kyokkō,_" Aaroniero iterated within her mind, now perfectly hidden from a visual and sensory degree, "_now that I'm hidden, I can have my Calaveras act on my accord. If any of them do happen to perish, I can always make more. I'll just have to hope none of them do when they have a meal I wish to take back to this body of mine._"

Without any delay, the four bodies departed in a deployment of Shunpo. Aaroniero herself closed her eyes, focusing on her newfound awareness and control over her Calavera forms. With no need to protect her original body while it remains unseen, she can freely exercise her intelligence over the rest.

"_The Hunt is on. Let's see who's next in line on this buffet list,_" Aaroniero thought with a carnal grin of hunger.

* * *

"Oh dear," Szayel commented offhandedly, placing a hand over his left ear in a cupped fashion, "I've lost trace of 'em. I wonder what's going to happen next..."

"W-What are you babbling about?!" Pesche uttered out loud, still heaving with exhaustion next to Dondochakka.

"Nothing to concern you two," Szayel said with a humored tone, waving his arms nonchalantly, "frankly I'm more concerned how my comrades elsewhere are doing. Your Cero, what was it called? That was certainly a heart stopper but it did little to me seeing as you gave me ample time to dismantle it. Such a shame really. Your superior's strength far exceeds that of yours combined that it's quite hilarious."

"Ha! You admitted that she's better than you!" Pesche pointed at the released Espada's disturbing form.

"I never claimed to be stronger than her. In terms of brute force, she's in a class all her own. But in terms of intelligence? Well, you saw how long it took for her to recover from my last experiment," Szayel said with a decadent grin, tapping his chin with purposeful thought, "I wonder...what kind of experiments I shall put her through this time that can overshadow that cracked skull of hers?"

"You...you...you b-b-bastard!" Dondochakka roared out, his polkadotted frame lunging wildly forward at his enemy.

"Wait for me, buddy!" Pesche shouted with haste after him.

"You idiots! Get back he-kaff-kaff!" Renji hacked after protesting their assault.

As expected, the two fell right into Szayel's trap. Two pairs of plant-like tendrils wrapped around one after the other, lifting them off the ground to squirm uselessly in the air. Squelches were emitted as the crimson flaps of flesh viscously pumped and squeezed the organic data from the two Arrancars. Once finished, they were unceremoniously dropped with wet thuds to the ground.

Coughing, the two looked up with despair at seeing a pair of identical Voodoo dolls made in their image in their enemy's hands.

"While I wait to see such results," Szayel said with a cruel smile stretched across his face, "I think I'll enjoy torturing you two for a bit!"

* * *

The battle seemed to drag on as it had before.

Ever since their released states had been put on display, Nnoitra had flailed and cut through the sandy environment wildly. His six arms slashed and stroked the air with terrifying force, a true testament to how far he had come in all these years. It was all any bystander could do to keep themselves from being caught in the flurry of blistering sand filled wind and the shockwaves that followed.

Yet for the life of him, Nnoitra found himself unable to land a single hit on her.

"Stop moving around, ya little shit!" Nnoitra crassly exclaimed, landing down to where Nelliel had been moments ago, burrowing his lowermost pair of scythes into the ground. Even after all this time he had to catch a few breaths of air. All the running he did seemed to be a waste of time and it was frustrating him to no end.

The sudden roar of motion from behind followed by a pair of hooves crashing into his backside, caused his eye to widen with incredulous pain.

"GAH!" Nnoitra cried out as he felt himself tumble head over foot, barreling into a fallen structure, shattering it in the process. Flipping himself back onto his feet, he gripped his pole handles tightly with frustration. Fixing his eye to fiercely glare at the stoic standing centauress, he shouted aloud in a goading manner, "stand still and fight me!"

"You should know by now, Nnoitra," Nelliel proclaimed, holding her lance aloft to her right forward flank, "that an Arrancar's Ressureccion acts a lot like a Shinigami's Bankai. Depending on the nature of our lives as Hollows depicts what class of release states we'll have as Arrancars. Yours is a rudimentarily simple Melee type, with most emphasis placed upon power. Mine is based on something else."

"Like I'd care," Nnoitra growled out, sprinting swiftly towards her, brandishing all of his weapons to the side with eagerness, "power is the only thing you need! Power is what Aizen wants! Seeing my power, he moved me from 8 to 5! You do the math and see what that means-"

As the one-eyed Shinigamified Hollow reached her space, he found that her form vanished in a dizzying blur. Appearing beside him, her arm seemed to thrust forward, its conical tip easily ripping apart the middle right arm of his clean off with its socket. After the limb and weapon clambered to the ground with a shower of blood, Nelliel halted her movement and swung her left hand in a backhanded motion.

Before Nnoitra could fully rear around to understand what happened, a yellow burst of light struck him fully in the chest, causing spittle and blood to spew out. After sprawling for a good two dozen meters, his body struck the face of a dune, causing it to explode in a violent shower of billions of grains. With luminescent traces of solar hued sparks crackling across his marred torso, Nnoitra stood back up with a grimace.

"My Ressureccion focuses on physical attributes promoting strength _and_ speed," Nelliel continued, her eyes looking at her enemy from the distance as her hair flourished with a gust of wind, "Gamuza is a blend of power and grace. It is a wondrous and dreadful power that I have to bear but I do so for the sake of those I cherish. That is the difference in both power and perspective you can never overcome, Nnoitra."

"Such talk makes me sick," Nnoitra snarled, standing back up straight once more. With a brief exertion of dark yellow Reiatsu, a brand new arm was grown in place of the one that had been torn off. With a flick of the wrist it formed a new scythe to replace the one out of reach, causing himself to smile with renewed vigor, "it's people like you that sicken me the most. Pitying those that don't fit in your wretched standings. I loathe the concept of mercy and that's all you ever do is be merciful. Mercy is for the weak, and that's what got you that scar in the first place!"

Closing her eyes, Nelliel sighed. Nothing she could say, even now, could get through to him. Her eyes slowly opened, glancing down at the ground below, wondering if any of her actions towards Nnoitra were the right ones.

"_No,_" Nel reaffirmed, raising her stoic gaze to stare hard at the deranged Arrancar, seething with unbelievable hatred for her, "_I don't regret any of my actions up to this point. Even if I was betrayed and my friends scarred I had so many days of blissful happiness following that. They were innocent times I shall always look back at fondly. It may not have been your intention, but I thank you for sparing my life when you had an ample opportunity to kill me._"

Rising up on her hind legs, the centauress reared back her right arm and gripped her lance tightly.

Such a sight gave way to knowing alarm, causing Nnoitra to kick off into a rapid paced sprint towards her, "_I'm not going to fall to that technique! Not this time!_"

"**Lanzador Verde!**" Nel cried out, hurtling her lance forward with a powerful hurtle of her arm. Corkscrewing across space, coils of pink-hued energy gathered around its tip, steadily increasing its force and speed in equal amounts. It reached Nnoitra's charging frame in a matter of seconds, aiming to run him through out the back.

"HAAAAAA!" Nnoitra roared out mightily, swinging all of his scythes forward in a meticulously timed motion, crashing into the high speed projectile. While he felt the edges of three or more of his blades shatter, the weapon was sent off kilter and tossing to the side. The fact he succeeded in this feat caused Nnoitra to laugh haughtily, followed with a thrusting burst of Sonido to appear before Nelliel's surprised frame.

"Surprised, aren't ya?! Didn't think I could do that to your signature technique?!" Nnoitra inquired pointedly, watching her step back with disbelief, wary of the now close by cracked moon shaped weapons. "don't worry. I'll make sure to cut you up all over. This time you won't be gettin' away from me!"

Rearing back all of his blades, Nel raised her own arms back to ready a hasty defense. Before the marred weapons could make a full swing, a lime colored light of a Cero crashed straight into the unsuspecting Espada. The small explosion cast over Nnoitra's arms and weapons showed no signs of actual injury but did enough to halt his attack. Turning his head, he saw the perpetrator and was absolutely livid.

"Starrk's bitch?!" Nnoitra snarled out, both in wonderment and thorough rage.

"That's right, ugly!" Lilynette shouted back, her mask still steaming from the discharge of a Cero over her fragment. She beaded sweat from how fast she had to move to reach her in time. But now, seeing Nel in her beautiful released form, she was relieved that she was alive and that she thwarted an attempt on her life. Pointing a finger of accusation at the six-armed Arrancar, she growled out, "what the Hell, Nnoitra?! I thought you said Nel died! Why are you trying to kill her?! Want to explain that one to me, huh?!"

"I don't have time for you," Nnoitra growled, turning his head over his shoulder, shouting with afterthought, "Tesra! Kill this bitch! I don't want the Primera's toy getting news ba-!"

Nnoitra wasn't able to finish sentence, finding Nel's head ramming straight into his with incredible force. Feeling his forehead split open from the freshly healed skull of hers, Nnoitra stumbled back, disoriented and coughing. He'd faintly get a look of a rare uncharacteristic visage of unadulterated rage flash across Nelliel's face. It looked terrifying and it made him stumble back even further as a fresh wave of magnified Reiatsu blazed in a brilliant pink light around her.

"I've had," Nel began to utter in a level growl, briefly interrupted by the swiftly accelerating frame of Tersa appearing above her. Swinging his chakram sword in a downward arc, it was promptly halted by a hind leg double kick that jettisoned his body high in the air. With the aura of a pink Bala careening him high into the sky, his form would indent into the false heaven vista above them, sticking his frame into it out of reach and out of mind. Landing back on all fours, Nel shouted with her own anger brought to the forefront, "enough of your childish acts of evil!"

Seeing his subordinate handily defeated and this new look of an angered Nelliel brokered sweat upon his crown. He rationalized that he shouldn't but the intense pressure of her Reiatsu and the mere presence she generated made him feel small and obsolete. His grip shook, rattling the weapons he had in his tight grip.

Raising a hand slowly towards him, a damning blackness formed with a pink outline to it. The sphere contorted and expanded, containing a noxiously lethal power within its essence. The pressure itself shook the ground and caused grains of sand to rise, crackling in a symphony of inevitable destruction. By the time it was fully primed, he'd recognize it as a Cero, and not just any Cero...

"**Cero Oscuras!**" Nelliel shouted aloud, unleashing the black void of destructive Reishi.

Enveloping Nnoitra at point blank, the fissure of blackness roared forward, annihilating any rising mound of sand and any structure foolish enough to be erect in its high velocity path. By the time it'd finish travelling past, trailing away from its target, a distant explosion would cause a momentary eclipse of the artificial Sun that was placed over their heads. With a tinge of pink dictating the passing of bleak darkness, the mushroom cloud of the Cero's explosion in the horizon would all be left of its manifestation.

What was left of Nnoitra made Nel's stomach turn. Charbroiled meat replaced what was flesh over the majority of his limbs, now holding stumps of the proud weaponry he brandished. Smoke rose up from a bare skull, parts of his jaw's muscle and skeletal frame quite visible as was the case with parts of his torso and upper legs. His eye glared defiantly at her, to the very end, as he barely stood after such an attack.

"N-N-N...e...l," Nnoitra wheezed out just moments before his eye rolled to the back of his head. His knees crashed to the ground and his face struck the sandy ground beneath him. His life, as Nelliel felt and saw, ceased to be.

"Farewell, Nnoitra," Nelliel spoke reverently, her head bowed before the lifeless husk he was now, "I'm sorry...that I couldn't save you..."

* * *

"Oh dear," Gin said with a sigh, though retained his cold smile nonetheless, "it seems Nnoitra kicked the bucket."

"Bastard deserved what he got," Rana said aloud in a dispassionate tone, leaving what appeared to be a store room. Instead of bare skin and a ragged piece of dirty cloth, she came out donned a full uniform. A reptilian scaled breastplate conformed over her generously sized bosom, allowing the sight of a jagged red scar in the shape of the number 1 over her sternum and collarbone. The plating didn't cover her smooth narrow midriff and lower back, with a white hued kama skirt with scarlet trimming covered stark white leggings tucked into pale colored scaled boots. Gauntlets of a similar silver shine affixed over her hands up to her upper arms past a spiked pair of elbow pads, matching the pair of rex teeth pauldrons perched over her shoulders. Said shoulder armor pieces held a crimson trimmed white cape in place to trail down to her boot covered heels, for which her fiery colored hair flowed freely over to the end of her back.

Gin took time to stare at Rana with a small smile as she adjusted her gauntlets and inspected her uniform. When she turned to meet his gaze, the lavender haired man already turned his head and whistled innocently. She had to restrain herself from unsheathing the bone-hilted cutlass sheathed in a black scabbard on her left hip.

Hearing a number of other rows of feet clamber down the hall for which the store room was located, Rana's attention was averted and her grip on her sword's hilt relaxed.

Leading a number of similar uniformed entities was Sin, now trading his Warden's uniform for a large robe conforming over a silk shapely uniform similar to other Arrancars in Aizen's Modern Arrancar Army. A hood drawn over his scalp, obscuring his eyes while allowing his menacing long jawed mask to protrude from it. Axe in hand and slung over his shoulder, one could tell he was passively on guard for the slightest mishap.

"_It's certainly nice to see some old faces,_" Rana thought with a small smile, the first that expressed true enthusiasm and relief in the many years she's been imprisoned.

The foremost trailing behind the Warden was her Segunda and right-hand man during her Espada days, Soto Muerte. Dark brown locks tucked behind a partially obscuring hood, his pale visage showing a strong gaunt with a vicious scar running across the bridge of his nose down to the end of his left jaw bone. Burgundy orbs burned behind the veil of darkness created by his linen cowl, as his short yet muscular frame kept in line behind his jailer.

"_Grim as usual, though I doubt incarcerated isolation has helped his disposition in the slightest,_" Rana noted.

Looking over to Soto's left was none other than a less than pleasing face from the past, the Sexta of her generation and most loathsome associate, Sverrie Alessi. With a cloak loosely tied around her shoulders, her voluptuous chest was endowed with a white linen top, composed of translucent silk that made seeing her feminine form all too easy in the right lighting. A simple black sash was tied around her waist, doubling as a form of cloth covering for her waist and hinds quarters but did little to keep herself decent behind her luminously transparent drapes. A feather-shaped cup guarded rapier was sheathed on her left hip, jingling absently as she walked forward. A calm smile stretched across her beautiful face, full with pink lips to accentuate her snow white complexioned body, complemented by a bone-crested crown looping her hair up into a high-rise styled ponytail, draping down her shoulder blades to the center of her back.

"_That smug bitch's grin is already pissing me off,_" Rana thought with an irritated twitch.

Glancing to and fro, she noticed other familiar faces but others weren't that all memorable. Either they had been forged by the Hogyoku and had been deemed ill fit to serve or they done crimes that Lord Aizen couldn't condone but wouldn't execute them for. It didn't matter to her. Everyone in this Vanguard appeared to be disposable shock troops during the worst possible scenario to occur.

"Is everyone here?" Gin piped up, reminding to Rana's chagrin that her Commander was still only a meter to her left.

"**_Yes, Commander Ichimaru,_**" Sin rumbled out dutifully, "**_they've all been appraised of the situation in a less worded manner so they could understand. The situation, in full, shall be left up to you to debrief._**"

"Excellent!" Gin clapped with a pleased smile. Turning around to face Rana, he bowed and dramatically gestured to the mass of Arrancars forming the ranks of the Vanguard, "I leave the rest up to you, Miss Zolinder."

"You're _too_ kind," Rana whispered with a visible sneer.

Taking a brief inhale, the Privaron Primera strode forward a few steps till she was a good six meters away from the foremost ranks. A sharp nod of her head to the scowling jailer gave him the hint, scooting aside to lean against the wall, taking care to keep vigilant of the demoted lot. Seeing that everyone she remembered and more were there, she began to speak.

"My comrades! It has been many years for us since we've seen the outside of our cells. We've all done -or rather haven't done- things that made us unfit to continue to serve as members of our _benefactor's_ military. Some of us have spent time in our cells for decades while others have only been in here for a few short years. The strain of isolation and the bare minimum contact with anyone but our less than hospitable Warden has taken a toll on us all. Have we grown weak from it? No! Have our wills diminished? You wouldn't have bothered to show up if they had!" Rana emphasized with gallant gestures of her arms and hands, encouraging noises and nods of affirmation to her.

However, less scrupulous characters failed to see the point of her speech.

"Get on with it!" An Arrancar called out from the posterior of the ranks.

"If we wanted to hear speeches, I'd have stuck with Lord Aizen a long time ago!" Another quipped next to him, causing a chorus of less than courteous chuckles to ring about.

Rana twitched and gripped her gloved hands tightly, but didn't accept the bait. Exhaling through her nostrils slowly, the brief bright glint in her eyes dimmed and her desire to kill was suppressed. The only true ones to notice were Sverrie and Soto.

"Haha, these years in isolation sure haven't quelled that ugly rage of hers," Sverrie commented under her breath, stroking the top of her left breast out of habit while the other rubbed her hip in a sensual manner. "here I was hoping we'd get along better..."

"Put aside your petty vendetta, Sverrie," Soto whispered in a guttural tone, turning his hooded visage to scowl coldly at her, "or I'll cut those hands you value you so much right off!"

"No wonder Rana favors you," Sverrie rolled her eyes, crossing her arms just underneath her barely covered chest, "you two make such a lovely, if not angry couple."

"As I was saying," Rana continued in a more hardened tone, "the fortress of Las Noches that we've all come to call home at one point or another has come under assault by intruders. _Shinigami_ invaders no less."

Hearing a number of audible murmurs of queries amongst their ranks caused a brief smile of satisfaction to cross her face. The prospect of combatting their opposites, something most of them have been denied or deprived of for so long, surely sent chills of excitement and trepidation of equal measure down their spines. Hearing no particular immediate queries, she continued, emphasizing the scenario with minimal gestures.

"According to Commander Ichimaru we've already sustained heavy casualties. Among those of the outlying region to here, we cannot say, but those who retain a place within Las Noches that have lost their lives facing this threat are but the following. Dordoni Alessandro Del Socaccio, Cirucci Sanderwicci, Gantenbainne Mosqueda, Aaroniero Arruruerie, Zommari Rureaux, Grimmjow Jeagerjaques and Nnoitra Gilga," She finished, hearing an ominous silence captivate her audience. Deciding to start from her own generation's ranks to those of the present, she knew that those who would remember such names by titles or reputation struck a chord in their hearts. Fear, relief, or excitement? She couldn't say, but said emotions definitely existed among the ranks of the selected Vanguard.

She just hoped they were all up to the challenge.

"The mission is simple in nature but most undoubtedly retains a high chance of casualties being involved," Rana began to conclude, clasping her hands in front of her to gain their utmost attention, "eliminate the invading force. Should you find sympathizers or allies reinforce them, kill them as well. Leave no survivors. Doing this, I'm told by our _trustworthy _Commander Ichimaru, will earn a place within Lord Aizen's Army. If we finish in a timely manner we can even join him in the main operation that will be commencing shortly."

One hand raised up, causing Rana's gaze to be drawn to immediately, "Yes?"

"If I may be so bold," An eloquent speaking Arrancar spoke up, stepping forward in step with two others. The speaking one was endowed with a full-body cloak, looking crisp and buttoned up, akin to that of a human military's officer. Black and white hair divided down the middle curled into dreadlock curls draped over the back of his neck. A diagonal aligned row of white bone piercings embedded from his right jaw line across the bridge of his nose to his upper left cheekbone. A pair of Sai knives was holstered upon his chest within holsters respectively, brandished almost like metals from how they glinted in the dim artificial lighting of the corridor.  
Another to his right, albeit with reluctance at such proximity, was an Arrancar with an equally tall yet slender build. Donning a pale trenchcoat with black gloves, he appeared to be equally militaristic visually yet had the air of arrogance to him to match his associate. Dark brunette hair slicked back to form two opposing peaks on his crown, with a visible jagged eyebrow over his right brow while his left eye and brow line was covered by a mask fragment containing a trio of gum sized holes. He possessed a sword of a scimitar in shape slung over his shoulder by way of dark brown belted bandoleer over his coat covered torso.  
The last was standing a bit more away to his left, almost observing the events from close up rather than siding with them. Taller than the rest while appearing more physically fit, he wore more standard Arrancar attire befitting someone of a far greater standing than those beside him. A long sleeved white kosode with black trimming, it revealed his midriff down in a pyramid shaped space to reveal his abdomen just above his white hakama skirt, with a distinct circular hole taking up his navel area. A yellow hued sword was sheathed on his waist, kept in his left hand's grip for readiness as his visible right thin browed eye stared at the two, his slicked back dark blue hair covered on its leftmost side while retaining a bone-ridged fragment that kept a triangular shaped eyehole.

"Who the Hell are you?" Rana asked bluntly, her eyes glaring daggers already at the man who acted so brazen in his mannerisms.

"Ah, yes. Where are my manners?" The Black and white haired Arrancar began.

"You had those?" The brunette Arrancar quipped with a sneering grin, earning a side-glancing scowl from his associate before he continued.

"My name is Luders Friegen, Arrancar #44," He finally continued, bowing slightly forward, quickly rising back to his full height. Gesturing lazily to either side, he smiled as he spoke in his presumptuous tone, "to my right is Asguiaro Ebern, Arrancar #42. The less respectful fellow to my left is Patros, Arrancar #59."

"Leave me out of whatever you're plotting," Patros said with a nasally tone, fixing a one-eyed glare while remaining in his steadfastly stoic position, "if you're going to ask her something, then do it. Don't waste all of our time with your pointless antics!"

"Touchy," Luders chuckled with amusement, returning his stare back at the glaring Rana, "I am curious as to whom is going to be in charge of this operation."

"Exactly how would that affect your performance in completing this simplest of simplistic tasks?" Rana asked pointedly, crossing her arms over her armored breasts.

"As you might have guessed, some of us aren't too fond of his majesty and the way he does things around here," Luders said without apology, grinning widely as he did so, exchanging a glance with Gin and Sin before returning back to the female Arrancar, "if we are going to be led by someone whose devoutly supportive of his ways and the cemented laws he embedded into our lives, then I may have a particular problem with said leader."

"Or," Asguiaro cued in, smiling cockily himself, "someone like you who tried to rebel against Aizen yet failed. I may not trust a leader who fails in her plans that were doomed to fail from the start. How am I supposed to trust that kind of superior?"

"So, what you're suggesting is," Rana spoke slowly, furrowing her brows to permeate a crease of visible irritation on her visage, "you'd rather have a figurehead that has no respect or acknowledgement of Aizen's laws or military. That you yourselves would make better leaders than a Shinigami would. Is that right?"

"While I wouldn't have said that," Luders leaned his head to the left, grinning darkly, "but I can't deny that sounds better than the alternative."

"I may not agree to this guy being _the_ leader," Asguiaro cued in, smiling in an equally malicious manner towards the red-haired Privaron, "I'd rather trust anyone other than a Privaron!"

The sounds of anticipation and anxiety brokered out among the Vanguard. Already there brewed mutiny, an attempt to usurp power from their would-be Vanguard Commander. The minority backed away, not wishing to be dragged into it, were outweighed by the majority who formed a half circle behind the brash duo and the closely observing third.

"That's a shame," Rana slurred out in a bored tone, unfurling a hand while gesturing a hand in their direction.

It happened quicker than the two thought possible. An explosion of gore splattered across Asguiaro's cheek and coat, causing his eye to widen and his body to flinch with horror. What had been the dominant arm of Luders detonated into a shower of blood and fleshy pieces, covering himself and his rightmost associate immediately. His eyes widened shortly before he let out a pained howl.

"I could have used some men with your ideology at my side," Rana murmured dryly, her extended hand crackling with scarlet tendrils, the telltale sign of a Bala discharge recently used, "but since you outright challenged me, you're no better than ungrateful dogs. Incapable of being pleased with your portion you bite the hand of the master that offers it to you for the idea of having a bigger cut. Dogs like you...need to be put down."

"YOU WITCH!" Luders cried out, his comrade growling in sync. Both reached for their respective weapons, ignoring the instantaneous attack that neither could follow, nor the obvious distance in power.

Neither of them were given the chance to follow up their threats. Moving at a speed contrary to the bulk he possessed, Sin appeared in front of them with a succinctly low tuned buzz. Swinging his axe down without remorse or hesitation, the double edged executioner blade cleaved cleanly down Luders' body from his head down to the floor. The thunderous smash that followed the symmetrical severing of his body sent his two parts scattered to either side of the corridor, causing Patros to backpedal away deftly to avoid being struck by the bloody carcass half while Asguiaro took to the air.

"Damned Shinigami lapdog!" Asguiaro snarled out, thrusting his two knives towards the brute's shoulders. With horror he saw the blades shatter upon contact, unable to even pressure the thick Hierro lying underneath the robed skin. Seeing himself weaponless, he was unable to defend against the backstroke of the axe, cutting his elbows and midsection in a clean half. A gurgle of bloody protest sounded before his eye rolled up, following a final decapitating strike that cut him as he fell to the ground.

As silence elapsed over the midst of the Vanguard, Sin rose up to his full height, cleaning his axe with a shred of the corpse's own coat. Looking over to the still standing ranks, Sin gutturally promised through his mask, "**_Try that again, and this will be your fate. I am more capable than most of you believe yourselves to be. Lord Aizen's words are law here, even in the darkest depths of his Palace. Through Commander Ichimaru, he has saw fit that Rana Zolinder be named your leader. If any of you have a qualm with that, you will have to go through me before even attempting to challenge her authority!_**"

Seeing any further signs of resistance effectively neutralized, Sin nodded respectfully to Rana before returning to his wall.

"_For whatever it's worth, I'm glad I have the Warden on my side,_" Rana thought with a curt smile, seeing the effects of his execution of the two rebels. Noticing that Patros had skirted back to the rearmost ranks of the assorted ranks, she could only assume he knew that from observation he had no chance. Would he betray them later? She could only keep an eye on him for the chance he may take in usurping her own authority.

Turning on her heels with a flourish of her cape, Rana motioned to them with her left gloved hand to follow. Wordlessly she commanded the ranks of those who were formerly imprisoned, now given the opportunity to return to Aizen's good graces. Each of their uniformed visages walked past Commander Ichimaru and Jailer Sin respectively, marching down the hall to rise to the taller levels of the Palace and head to their destination. It wouldn't be until the last pair walked past that Sin joined them as well, keeping an eye from behind so none may escape or try anything hostile.

"_What a lively bunch Aizen's chosen as his Vanguard,_" Gin thought with a thin smile, watching them disappear around the corner. After hearing the last of their steps echo into silence, he himself turned to go back to his spot in the Comm room, "_I better keep an eye on things. Who knows if I may miss the most exciting parts before our departure?_"

* * *

**A/N:** And done! So sorry for the wait, it's taken me awhile for a number of reasons I know would bore you if I went into detail. Needless to say, I got my writing mojo back and I am anticipating on getting another Chapter done this week, perhaps even a couple days! I hope the Chapter wasn't too long or boring, for I really put my all into most of this update.

As some have you been asking about if Aaroniero can access her assimilated aspects/(powers) unique to each person she devoured, I hope this Chapter answered that. While she's trying to keep a low profile, at the very moment, there may come a time when she has to show just what kind of threat she's become. Just how dangerous? You'll have to wait to find out ;)

I hope I did Nelliel's victory over Nnoitra more justice than was handled in Canon. Considering how she was shamelessly depowered so that Kenpachi could take the glory of beating this one-eyed bastard, I wanted to give her a better part. Even though it wasn't a completely one-sided victory, I thought it was best that I threw Lilynette in there so I wouldn't forget her and that she had some kind of attachment to our lovely Centauress Arrancar

Kudos to anyone who saw the Easter Egg Arrancars I had mentioned in the Vanguard's ranks. I hope you liked those I intend to keep around for awhile as they are original characters I worked up of my own imagination. The only one that I had some reference material (for both personality and character concept) to work off of was the lovely and seductive Sverrie Alessi. She was a character that I worked up my own design to match the personality given. I hope people like what I have in store for her ;)

And once again thank Lastation for helping with the Editing process as he's previewed this before I posted this in mint condition :)

I think that covers everything, yes, that's it. See you all in the next update, to which I hope it's soon. See ya all in the next, _**A Predator Among Us!**_


	5. Old Hatred Never Ages

**A Predator Among Us**

* * *

Far off near the outer perimeter of Las Noches desert enclosure, little conflict was seen. In the distance, the faint echoes of monumental battle was to be heard and felt. Flashes of light, haphazard trails of Reishi carving and demolishing the landscape for kilometers around. Should such a number of forces do battle within a populated area, there surely be no life at this moment within its borders.

But one thing happened that be outside of most watchful eyes. Something that warped and rippled the space high up in the interior space of Las Noches. Just below the clouds opened a black eye, opening to reveal nothing but silhouettes from within. Such an eye appeared to emanate out of nothing, penetrating the fabric of the dimension directly in the heart of enemy territory.

Among such silhouettes stood three noteworthy individuals. The first to step forward was the Haori cloaked Head of the Kuchiki Clan, Byakuya Kuchiki. His eyes drifted down to the solar lit sands below their skyline vantage point, already observing the environment with keen eyes and even sharper senses. Looking to his left, he could feel what most undoubtedly was a host of hostile Reiatsu, overlapping a few familiar ones.

"It appears that we're a good distance from the actual targets," The second figure of the three spoke, being the burgundy complexioned white haired Lieutenant of the First Division, Chōjirō Sasakibe. His specially tailored white cloak flourished around his Shikhakushō, his left hand kept dutifully by his sword while the other remained idle at his side. His eyes were drawn in the same direction as Byakuya's as he spoke. "and it appears there's a number of considerably powerful ones where we need to go."

"Bah! You worry too much, Lieutenant," A dour pitched voice commented, revealing the third and most foreboding silhouette now revealed as the Captain of the 12th Division and President of the R&D, Mayuri Kurotsuchi. Now outfitted in a getup that modified his crest into a more cobra styled headdress, having even adopted a golden chin brace similar to what Pharaohs wore. He smiled a chilling golden toothed grin, as he cast his gaze forward, away from the objective, "there are a number of other fine specimens away from the large collaborative. One of which I've had the most fortunate pleasure of studying on the way through the Garganta and prior. You can have your glorious battle of barbarism and mayhem while I can conduct my research!"

"Do what you will, Captain Kurotsuchi," Byakuya said in a cold, detached tone, "I am going to complete our directive in what we set out to do in the first place. Keep in mind about your duties when performing your _experiments_."

It was only when Byakuya kicked off the Garganta's edge did his body free fall to the earth, leaving behind a infuriated Captain behind. When a number of shadowy silhouettes, including the Lieutenant, went with him, the face-painted Shinigami rolled his eyes. Looking over his shoulder, he saw his faithful "daughter" and subordinate waiting attentively.

"C'mon, Nemu!" Captain Kurotsuchi said raspily, before smiling deviously as he too free fell off the Garganta's opening to the desert below, "it's time we collect some specimens!"

* * *

**Chapter **

_**OLD HATRED NEVER AGES**_

**Five**

* * *

**Earlier**

"_Something isn't right_," Aaroniero thought from within her undetected enclosure. Her eyes were closed as she remained in a meditative stance, passively using her **Busqueda la Mente** to detect all Reiatsus within a large radius. From what she could sense a number of Reiatus emerged on the horizon. "_they're all Arrancars, yet they seem familiar. Wait, is that...oh no!_"

The Vanguard. Those of which Aaroniero was told of when many Arrancars who weren't executed found themselves buried in the bowels of the White Citadel's dungeon. A last resort of directive defense measures taken when the primary military couldn't combat the intruding threat or was unable to respond due to any number of reasons.

Despite their arrival, she managed to form a hidden smile.

"_It seems Aizen isn't going to send in the elite three. This bodes well for me, for I still have need to collect the targets that I need to further my evolution. Even if it comes down to it, I'm certain any one of my Calaveras can handle them_," Aaroniero concluded with a calming sigh, refocusing her efforts on acquiring her prey. From what she could tell, Szayel was continuing his sadistic games, keeping his enemies alive for as long as possible. She didn't dare cross him without a precise method of bringing him down, especially in the state her Pesquisa is analyzing him retaining. "_I'll make sure to have the Calavera heading in his direction hold back and suppress Reiatsu. Don't want to give away my intent just yet. As for the others, I'll just quietly pick off the corpse and the dying one. The one stuck in the sky isn't as strong as the rest, but I can't be a picky eater at a time like this, can I?_"

* * *

Everything ached. Every twitch, every muscular contraction, and every breath inhaled caused daggers to drag across every possible nerve ending. With every palm gripping the deceivingly cool sand, a groan emitted from his mouth as he pulled himself forward. Blood oozed from deep gashes over his chest, a perforation over his midsection having long since halted the majority of its leakage looked dark in its coloration.

The whole situation was the most humiliating that Grimmjow had been in.

"Gah...Gah...Gah," Grimmjow heaved heavily as he crawled on all fours. Leaving a considerable blood trail from which he had been left to die by the bastard Nnoitra, he forced himself to move as the conflict against Ichigo and surprisingly the childlike brat. Who knew she was really Nelliel, the former Tres Espada?

It didn't matter to him. He just needed to reach his gleaming blade, the source of his power, half buried in the sand ahead of him. Only six meters ahead. All he had to do was pull himself forward another five meters and then reach out. Anything that came after was irrelevant. He needed his sword!

"Just got to reach for it...just a little further...a little more!" Grimmjow growled gutturally, finding himself dragging belly down to get to his destination. One hand reached after the other as grimaced, feeling the grains of sand burrow into his wounds. He swore one of his injuries deepened as he continued to levy himself over the sandy plains.

Gasping out, Grimmjow clawed his body upwards before falling flat onto his face. Grunting, Grimmjow grinded his face up, spitting out mouthfuls of sand. Gritting his teeth he pushed his arm through the sand, having it emerge up to be but inches from the azure threads that made up his hilt.

When the sand was kicked up by a sandal-bound foot, flipping up into the air to be caught in an inverted grip, Grimmjow blinked agape. Craning his head with strained gasps, his blurry vision gave him the outline of a very familiar Shinigami. One of which he saw in a past meeting with Aizen and the other Espadas upon their intrusion into Hueco Mundo. One that he impaled with his very hand and felt the broadcast of her slaying Aaroniero. The very one that stared coldly down on his frame as if he didn't mattered, and was pitiable.

It sickened him to be looked down upon by _this _lowly Shinigami.

"B-B...itch!" Grimmjow snarled up between wheezing breaths, his brow caked in sweat and dried blood as he glared upwards at her, "g-give...me...that!"

What followed wasn't a witty retort or a spiteful phrase. Instead he'd feel white hot pain as his own sword thrust down into the back of his hand, sliding through his palm into the sand below. If he wasn't already in pain, he knew he'd exclaim fury among a slew of curses under his breath. The best he could do was stare incredulously at the sword piercing his hand, driven deep through his flesh and into the sandy soil below.

"I seem to recall you pinning Ichigo down this way when he wasn't a match for you," Calavera Rukia said with venom, a cold stare of indifference to the Arrancar's plight projected from her violet eyes, "was your quest in becoming ruler of Hueco Mundo worth it? What a pitiful sight for a King, worthless scum!"

"Why...you-!" Grimmjow began to growl, finding himself cut off by what he saw. The left hand of the Shinigami seemed to warp and twist out of shape. It became a dark purple, tubular tentacle with sick mucous layered over it and saliva ebbing out of a sharp toothed maw. The edges of the maw expanded, easily blocking his view of the Sun glaring down on him. The silhouette of the predatorial tendril rushing towards him gave him the stark, humiliating realization.

**The King had become Prey. **

* * *

"_Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez has been devoured_," Aaroniero thought with a humored smile, "_guess you aren't as Kingly as you thought yourself to be, hm?_"

With him out of the way, Aaroniero focused on her remaining goals. Already she had one taking flight overhead, reaching the altitude of which the canopy's top resided within. From her Calavera's eyes she could see a large pillar of smoke ebbing from the farthest walled off area of Las Noches. The Cero Oscuras carved a deep trench across the Palace's sands out into Hueco Mundo's wastes.

"_I'd best not approach Nelliel with hostile intent. There's no way any of my Calaveras can stand up to her, meals or no_," The Shinigami bodied Arrancar decided with rightful caution. Already the one in the "sky" of Las Noches found Tesra Lindocruz. As the Calavera there began to feast upon the Quinto's Fraccion, she felt the other approach the Quinto's corpse.

* * *

"Finally," Aaroniero whispered lowly to herself, finding some merit of accomplishment in her actions. She could already feel the Calavera closest to Szayel halt just half a kilometer away from his battlefield. From there she'll monitor his movements. The Calaveras having finished with Grimmjow and Tesra are to return to her once the last has completed her meal, "soon, I'll have enough power to challenge even the Upper Three. Then I can worry no longer about opposition!"

It took a little longer to reach the corpse of Nnoitra than she thought. The Calavera had to hide her Reiatsu to such an extent that using Shunpo was out of the question. She dared not risk a confrontation with the former Tres or the Shinigami she's apparently with. Dashing and leaping from dune to dune, the Rukia bodied offspring continued to move with haste.

With a skidding halt, Aaroniero finally found her duplicate's form directly in front of Nnoitra's corpse. Already the crispy residual parts of barely intact flesh began to flake away, turning into dust shortly after flowing up into the atmosphere. The sign of spiritual body corrosion was already under effect.

"_Better make this quick!_" She decided, kneeling before the body. With a thrust into the body's backside, her hand contorted and shifted into its tendril makeup. Easily breaking up the decaying body into edible matter, only a handful of seconds passed by before the entire broken form of the Arrancar was absorbed into her being.

"_Finally!_" Aaroniero thought, causing her Calavera's face to light up with a beaming smile. Forcing its hand back into its original shape, it clenched its digits experimentally as it felt the power store itself within her innermost being. A slight giggle escaped her lips as her smile turned cheshire with how delighted she was to have accomplished her goals, for the most part. "_all that's left is to wait for Szayel to finish off his prey and I can scavenge off his leftovers. With all four returning to me at once, it would be a simple matter of being __discreet_-"

Her thoughts were interrupted when white hot pain flashed in her mind, having been felt directly upon the recently fed Calavera's backside. The force of the attack sent her sprawling through an entire pile of sand, causing it to explode violently upon her exit out the other side. Tumbling head over toe, her body barely regained a crouched posture to face her attacker.

What her Calavera's eyes caused Aaroniero's and her duplicate's to widen to alarm. Casually appearing within a whip of buzzing air was a beautiful Arrancar, over twice the height of her when standing. An outstretched hand pointed lazily, still sparkling with crimson energy, as her half-lidded gaze stared down her offspring's hunched and pain-ridden form.

"Why hello there, pretty thing," Rana said with an amused smile stretching across her face, hand lowering down to her side, "fancy meeting you here. Sorry about the greeting. I'd brought sake cups so we can chit-chat about the weather and braid each other's hair, but I thought a Bala to your spine would have done justice to the Hollow way of greeting a Shinigami!"

"_There's no mistaking it. It's her. The Last Primera, Rana Zolinder!_" Aaroniero thought as her limited clone winced and beaded sweat down her messy banged brows. From simple deduction, she could feel a large purple bruise formed over her back. Steam ebbed from the heat of the concussive Reishi cannon ball that hit her barely covered, unprotected back. Her collar of her kosode barely kept her desert cloak intact, having been torn apart by the bludgeoning the projectile put upon her person. "_this isn't good. I can't afford to lose Nnoitra's Aspect in a fight against her. Even if she's yesterday's news, her power back then could easily trump my Calavera's. What should I do? Retreat?_"

"Not the chatty type? That's alright," Rana jeered aloud, taking a few casual strides as she leveled her gaze in a lethal light at her enemy, "I got time to kill."

"I'm not interested in fighting you," Aaroniero's Calavera sneered, drawing her Zanpakutou shortly before backpedaling away, "but I'm not going to let you get the better of me!"

"That so?"

Aaroniero froze as she felt her back painfully run into Rana's knee. With the breath rushing out of her lungs, she saw the afterimage of Rana's person that was standing a good distance away moments ago, disappear as if it was a mirage. Coughing, she turned around her swung in counterattack, cleaving the air in a horizontal fashion. Meeting Rana's neck, the blade rebounded with a spray of orange sparks, causing a shot of pain to rush up Aaroniero's arm for even attempting to cut her.

"Now that's just sad," Rana mused, cocking her head in the direction the blade had stroked moments ago, "was that sword really filled with your Reiatsu, or are you just fucking with me right now?"

"_Shit, she wasn't even phased!_" Aaroniero thought with visible alarm. The Calavera stepped back warily, unable to hide the fear it felt towards Rana's imposing form. Her enemy sighed with irritation, scratching her scalp with clear annoyance at this revelation.

"Just great! Here I outran the others so I could get a piece of some action by attacking an intruder worth my time. But here you are. Can't dodge, can't run, and can't fight. What a pathetic Shinigami you are," Rana said dryly, raising her gaze back towards the Calavera's shaking and gasping frame.

"_I have to get the others to help. I need this body extracted, or else-!_"

Aaroniero stopped herself when she felt the searing pain of a knife positioned hand pierced her chest with little consequence. Rana's towering frame made it easy for her to lift the Calavera's body off the ground, squirming and gurgling. Blood oozed out of her mouth as she uselessly batted her blade and feet against the amazonian built woman.

"Sayonarra," Rana whispered aloud, just shortly before a brilliant scarlet Cero exited the Calavera's backside. Only a few twitched of movement were left before the limp body fell to the ground with a lifeless look in her eyes. Sword clattered just out of reach, as a large hole with ember lit flesh burned within the center of her uniform's chest and midriff.

* * *

Feeling her connection cut off from her Calavera, she knew that any hope of extracting her back to her person was a lost cause. Even within her safe spot, Aaroniero couldn't help but slam her fists onto the ground out of frustration, screaming behind her teeth. Her eyes closed and her brows knitted together with incredulous anger.

After palming her hands into the sand for a full minute, she began to regain her composure, with only a few remnants of anger wheezing out of her nostrils. Returning to her meditative state, she initiated her Pesquisa, following the current that was Rana's impressionable Reiatsu. There she felt a host of Reiatsus follow her, now in direct tow of her. To her surprise and relief, she saw that they left the body unattended.

"_I'll send the skybound Calavera to devour that corpse. It still has Nnoitra's essence within it, so combining his with his Fraccion's should be fine. I just have to make sure to give it time to access that power this time around, otherwise I'll have a repeating action occurring_," Aaroniero plotted, already directing the Calavera in question to rapidly employ Shunpo. Feeling no change in direction of the Vanguard's movements, she felt confident to move her other Calaveras appropriately.

It was at that point, also, that Aaroniero became very aware of just how close the Vanguard were to Ichigo and Nel's position. With their attention now solely fixated upon them, she can plan a means of not only acquiring more sustenance but initiate her own next moves. If she was to survive, she can't wait for her pawns to return back to her.

"A little payback never hurts either, now does it?" Aaroniero whispered to herself with a dark smile as she glared at the horizon.

* * *

"You feeling better, Ichigo?" Orihime asked from her standing spot, hands splayed out in a comforting manner.

"A lot, thanks to you," Ichigo said with a relieved smile. Slowly yet surely, aches and injuries began to fade away as if they hadn't been there in the first place. From scrapes to cuts, bruises to fractures, the phenomena that caused his injuries was being undone one bit at a time by Orihime's incredible powers. If he only knew just how incredible of an ability it was, Ichigo would feel more in awe from her _healing touch_, as it were.

He could only wonder how Nel was doing. Thoughts lingered to the beautiful warrioress that came from the body of a child that he had been protecting. In turn when he was at his most weakest, he was defended by her, someone who cared for him deeply. Her fight seemed colossal in scale, even outstripping his own battle with Grimmjow that he had only minutes ago. Even when it seemed, from what he saw lingering in the distance, that she was on the losing end she never gave up. For some reason or another she was almost a mirror of the best attributes in himself without reflecting any of his own vices.

As he let out a sigh, staring off in a daze after where Nelliel was galloping in the distance, Orihime could see something behind his gaze. An unknown desire that he himself hadn't been aware of but only she could piece together. Ever since Nelliel's awakening, rescuing Ichigo in a timely fashion, and then taking the fight to the horrible Arrancar Orihime had a pit in her stomach. She had been completely useless, unable to even protect herself let alone the person who came to her rescue.

Yet when Nel showed up in Ichigo's time of need, she could only stand by and pitifully hope everything turn out alright.

"_She's stronger than I'll ever be. Someone like that is made for Ichigo,_" Orihime thought as she turned her head to her right. With her bangs hiding her eyes, only a sparkle of light refracted off the lone tear that trailed down her face.

It was during their bouts of reveries that the sudden rush of wind kicking up across Ichigo and Orihime's bodies caused them both to blink with surprise. While Orihime refocused her gaze over her left side sheepishly, Ichigo simply leaned forward. There in her glorious released Centauress form, something the two had only seen from afar, stood Nelliel herself. Sitting upon her backside, hugging her waist tightly, was another young Arrancar neither had seen before.

But from the way Nel smiled and regarded the girl, it was clear she was a friend of hers.

"Wow! What a rush," Lilynette giggled with joy, her hair sticking up in a fray from the high velocity winds that disheveled her lime hued tresses. Looking up at Nel's shoulder glancing visage, she smiled widely as she held her waist, "it's been forever since I've had so much fun! I forgot how fast you are!"

"I'm glad you've enjoyed the ride," Nel said affectionately, rubbing the young girl on her head, matting her hair back onto her crown in a neater manner. Nodding to the ground with her lance wielding arm, she spoke softly, "you need to get off now, though. I need to recover from my battle with Nnoitra and to do that, I'll need to seal my power back into my Zanpakutō."

"Gotcha," Lilynette said with an affirmative nod. Deftly, she propped herself into a two-hand springing handstand on her Centauress back. With a bend of her knees and arms, she leaped up and twirled around in an acrobatic twirl to land onto her feet gracefully next to Nel. With a wave of her arms, she proclaimed loudly, "TA-DAAAAA!~"

Hearing the lack of applause, barring an encouraging clap by Nel, Lilynette lowered her arms to her sides and retracted her grin immediately. Pouting her lips, she placed her hands on her hips as she stared at Ichigo and Orihime's bewildered expressions. Furrowing her visible brow, she asked aloud in a snide tone, "Who the Hell are you guys? Shinigami? Human?"

"_Great,_ another _brat,_" Ichigo thought with a visibly dry twitch of a now irritative expression crossing his face, "_here I thought I didn't have to deal with a kid and now I get one that's easily my sister's age if not older. Tween's already glaring at me and I don't like it!_"

Orihime could only smile sweetly while trying to maintain composure, failing to conceal the nervous sweat beading down her brow. She could tell that this girl's abrasive nature was a default defense mechanism. Her doting attitude towards Nel vanished the moment she acknowledged their presence, making her an avowed preferential person.

"_It's like she's Nel's little sister,_" Orihime noted with a softer smile, earning a childish scowl from Lilynette at her.  
"Hey! What's so funny?!" Lilynette stepped forward, raising up a balled fist to shake at her with indignation, matching the look of iration across her visage, "you makin' fun of me?!"

"No, it's just," Orihime began to say, smiling in a beaming manner as she kept focus on healing Ichigo's injuries, "you look as if you really like Miss Nel, that's all."

Lilynette's entire demeanor shrank, as if her button was pushed precisely. Her cheeks lit up like beets as she stood up and turned away. Averting her gaze from the analytical brown eyes of the human girl, Lilynette retorted in a bashful stammer, "S-Stupid! You shouldn't go around saying things like that!"

"No need to be harsh to them, Lily," Nelliel said aloud, drawing all gazes back to her as she spoke. Her stature shrank as most her body became wrapped up in pink light. The flared horns of her mask fragment retracted into smaller curled angles, retaining the healed state the mask had undergone minus the missing teeth. As her human torso was exposed and the last remaining fragments of Gamuza was resealed into the crescent guarded sword, she sheathed it into the scabbard being held within her left hand. When the last wafting remnants of pink Reishi left her form, eyes around her expanded exponentially by all viewers, unnoticed by Nelliel as she finished speaking, "Ichigo is someone I care for deeply, and anyone that's his friend is also my fr-"

"Uh...Nel," Lilynette began to say, her face turning beet red at what she saw below Nelliel's waistline.

"Hm?" Nel looked down, blinking curiously at what was causing a cool draft upon her slender legs. Naked legs that had nothing covering her thighs up to her curvy shaped hips and pelvis. The sight of her nude frame took her a few moments to process as she looked up at Orihime's eye-shut and Ichigo's agape expressions. Both of them looked equally bashful. Cocking her head to the side, she propped her hand upon her right hip, using the pommel of her sheathed sword to scratch the side of her head, "what's the big deal?"

"Y-Y-You dumbass!" Lilynette shouted, leaping out in front of Nel's front, desperately trying to cover the sight of her unclothed lower region with her own slim body, "you transformed while wearing those rags, didn't you?! Now you're walking around showing your-!"

"I don't see what the problem is," Nel pouted her lips childishly, tapping Lilynette atop her head, "you've seen me naked before, haven't you?"

"B-But N-Nel! That strawberry haired Shinigami's a GUY!" Lilynette enunciated aloud, leaning her head in Ichigo's direction with strained craning gestures of her neck.

With a flutter of her eyes, Nelliel raised her head to look at Ichigo across the sandy distance. She noted how his eyes were wide and his pupils were shrunken to the size of pins. A thin dribble of blood leaked out of his nose, flowing down towards his chin. Most of all, his face was a very vivid complexion of crimson.

With a gasp, Nelliel raised her free hand up to cup her mouth with shock.

"_Finally, she gets it,_" Lilynette sighed in thought, emphasizing her relief with a wry, if not embarrassed smile.

The next moment later, Lilynette found herself bowled over by the rapidly leaping Nelliel, with her legs upturned, arms splayed out, and her head slamming into the desert earth below. With a grunt, she saw from her upside down angle that she sailed through the air, shattering through the Sōten Kisshun shield. She saw her glomp the dazed, now audibly startled man and hug him in a constrictive embrace around his shoulders and back, pushing his face into her bosom forcefully.

"Don't die, Ichigo!" Nel cried out, smothering his orange locks with her face as her arms squeezed tightly over his neck and the back of his head.

"C-C-Can't...breathe...!" Ichigo croaked in between the emerald clothed bosom, arms flailing at being assaulted so nonsensically.

"M-Miss Nel!" Orihime cried out, now looking embarrassed and horrified all at once.

"_She didn't get it at all!_" Lilynette thought with a visible vein beating over her inverted browline.

Feeling the repeated slaps to her back and head, Nelliel halted her insistent squeezing and released Ichigo from her buxom embrace. Seeing him inhale lungfuls of air, his face thoroughly flushed from just being close to a nearly nude woman. Still squatting over him she gently leaned back in and hugged him in a much more tender fashion, earning a look of surprise on the Substitute's face once again.

"I'm so glad you're okay," Nelliel said with a smile. From Orihime's perspective, one outside of Ichigo's knowledge, she could see hints of tears escaping Nel's closed eyes as she hugged him tightly against herself.

Awkwardly, Ichigo returned the hug, ignoring the uncomfortable status of her decency. He had almost forgotten that she fought for his sake and was worried for his wellbeing. Being the type to not shrug off someone's feelings, Ichigo returned the embrace even if it was outside his own comfort zone. Not that holding her was unpleasant, as her womanly frame felt comforting against his own.

Orihime had to steel herself not to snap or to look away. She knew it would be childish if she involved her personal feelings over someone Ichigo just met. Her more rational side dissuaded Ichigo's words of fascination over Nel, finding it simply as simple awe for what defining characteristics she possessed.

One of which she was helping keep modest.

Erecting a smaller Sōten Kisshun shield around Nelliel's waistline down to her knees, she began the hasty rejection process of restoring what had been lost. Swiftly emerald threads began to manifest out of thin air, wrapping themselves snugly around the luscious legs all the way up to her hips, forming short emerald green skirt. Knowing that was all she could get away with in their proximate state, she dispelled the barrier, feeling that she did her best to restore Ichigo's vitality as well.

"Whew!" Orihime said with a purposeful sigh, wiping her forehead to attract the pair's attention. Said attention also lessened their embrace, causing them to separate, causing her to smile as normal while letting out an unintentional sigh of relief. Pumping her arm up, she grinned ear to ear with pride, "I got you all fixed up, Ichigo! I even replaced Miss Nel's garments!"

Hearing this, both of them stood up and examined themselves.

Ichigo felt like a million bucks. Any signs of damage he took from both Grimmjow and Nnoitra had been completely erased. Even the marring scuffs upon his cloak were gone, a testament to how truly restored he was. What intrigued him most was the fact he didn't feel all that tired, as if the space of time he took not fighting while watching Nel battle on his behest gave him time to reclaim his lost Reiryoku.

As Ichigo gripped his hands experimentally, Nel whined in a put-out manner at seeing her skirt restored.

"I liked the feeling of nothing covering my leg-GAH!" Nelliel began to say to herself, finding herself yelping as her bum was poked hard by Lilynette's single horned head. Landing back onto her feet, she rubbed her clothed bum while furrowing her brows indignantly at her, "what was that for?!"

"You being a idiot, that's what!" Lilynette yelled back, heaving heavily, still brushing sand off her lithe frame. Groaning she massaged her temples, closing her eyes as she voiced her thoughts, "between you and Starrk, I swear I act like the adult most often."

"No need to be so violent, Lilynette," Nelliel said with a huff.

Before Lilynette could work up a retort the sound of a scoffing laugh could be heard. Following the visual blur of a swift arrival via Sonido, Lilynette's eye bugged out at what she saw. Draped in a barbarian warrioress uniform, complete with spiked pauldrons and a cape to complement her scarlet hued tresses flowing down her back, flourishing within the current of wind. Crimson eyes glared at Lilynette and Nelliel in particular, a sardonic tone emitting from her lips as she spoke, "Please! As if Nelliel doesn't have a violent bone in her body!"

"Y-You're-!"

"-Rana!" Nelliel finished after Lilynette, finding her own face imitating shock that was mimicked across the group.

"Been a long time, hasn't it, Nelliel?" Rana asked with a vindictive smile, cocking her head to the side as she crossed her arms over her expansive chest.

"Not long enough," Nel retorted as she bent her knees, gripping the scabbard of her weapon tightly as her eyes narrowed, "what are you doing here?"

"Heh, that's all you have to say? I'm disappointed," Rana began to say with an amused smile, before it lengthened to become predatorial, "did you forget what happened fifty years ago? I haven't. I've counted every day I've spent in that Hellhole of a cell. I remember vividly that scene of your stone cold face as you assisted in the deposing of _my_ rank. _My Espada!_"

"The rank and power of the Espada isn't yours to use upon your own whim. We swore on oath to our benefactor, Lord Aizen, that we would continue to be his blades to achieve his goal. That is what means to be an Espada," Nelliel responded back stoically, her gaze and stance never wavering, "you lost your way when you believed the Espada belonged to you, Zolinder."

Rana didn't bother responding, only visibly twitching. Unfurling her arms from her bosom, she clenched her digits into tightened fists. Red eyes burned brightly, her hair flourishing upwards in a dance of gravity defying motion, glistening with a blood hued aura emanated by her own steadily rising Reiatsu. The sand began to gently part around the soles of her boots, sending a bristling wave of hot wind cascading across the land around her.

Ichigo could only stand by and grip his fists with anxiousness. Another enemy showed itself, this one having a past with Nel to boot. Glancing briefly over his shoulder he noted that his sword was close by. "_At least I can get to it easily. If Nel and I team up, we should be able to take her down before we-_"

The cacophony of Sonidos sounding off caused Ichigo's thoughts to stop dead in his tracks. Distortive blurs dissipated, revealing many cloaked figures, all bearing similar white hued uniforms of various designs and style preference.

"_Where the Hell did they come from?!_" Ichigo thought with a grimace, grinding his teeth as he gnashed visibly at them with a turn of his head in every direction, "_there's a lot of 'em! Can we take them all on?!_"

"**_Zolinder,_**" The most proximate and largest of the Arrancars, Sin, rumbled out. This earned a dispelling of her aura, a visible sign she was paying attention. When she turned to look up at him over her shoulder, "**_it isn't wise to accelerate yourself ahead of us. There is safety in numbers, after all._**"

"I can handle myself. Besides, you were moving too slow," Rana quipped with a gnash of her teeth.

"**_We need to be smart about how we approach the-!_**"

During the split second he was talking, Nelliel's crouched form seemed to blur forward, moving faster than Sin could follow. Reaching Rana's space, she thrust her sheathed weapon, the katana's pommel racing towards the scarred cleavage. Upon impact, a devastating shockwave of pink Reiatsu billowed outwards, causing a number of proximate Arrancars to be flung back helplessly.

"**_Ngh!_**" Sin buckled and felt himself pushed back a few steps, caught off guard by the turquoise haired woman's attack. Blinking away the sand stinging his eyes, his crocodilian mask parted slightly, looking surprised at whom was striking Rana. Someone he hadn't seen in over fifty years, "**_Lady...Tres?_**"

While Sin was in awestruck, many of the Arrancars looked on with surprise, not having noticed who Rana was facing till now. Nelliel Tu Odelschwanck, the Tres of the Espada that replaced the first generation. Despite her change in attire no one could forget her unmistakable appearance and attractive form. The power they felt cemented her identity as her Reiatsu thrummed to life around them.

"Did that bitch go down?!" Lilynette asked, coughing as she rose up from her own toppled position, while Ichigo had stood his ground to gape openly. When Lilynette saw the look of disbelief and sweat bead down his face, she could tell something was up. Looking over to see what happened, her own eye widened with shock at what she saw, "n-no way!"

There stood Nel, the pommel of her sword grinding into a resisting surface. Said impact wasn't the intended target, but a swiveled defensive palm, grasping the sword hilt and deflecting the force of the attack. Rana only now decided to turn her head to look Nelliel's own shock-ridden grey eyes with her own crimson orbs. A bemusing grin slid across her face, presenting a menacing visage complemented by the stream of heated Reishi dispersing from her hand and the bludgeoning weapon.

"This brings back memories, doesn't it? I think you used the same method to incapacitate me the last time we crossed paths. My flesh was torn inward and my bones shattered. I thought I was going to die then and there," Rana began to wrap her digits around the sheathe, pushing it back slowly back at Nel, paying no mind to her shaking arm straining to push back. Her smile diminished upon pushing the sheathe a solid foot back, her eyes glaring heatedly as she uttered with absolute loathing, "but you're too cruel to give me a quick death, aren't you?"

Without retorting, Nelliel swung her free hand up, encasing it within a halo of pink-white Reishi. To her chagrin the palm-heeling Bala missed its mark, Rana leaning her head swiftly to the right, causing her hair to flourish wildly as it soared upwards in an arc of bright light. Before the hand could be withdrawn her wrist was captured by Rana's own free hand, locking it into a tight vice grip.

"What's the matter?" Rana asked coyly, her smile thin and her eyes flashing with sadism. Launching her knee forward, a satisfying clap of cartilage meeting her abdomen was heard. Seeing Nelliel gasp aloud, eyes shrinking with apparent pain, caused the Privaron to chuckle, "you're not fucking with me, are ya? Huh?!"

Punctuating her last query, Rana rammed her forehead against Nel's. An audible explosion of air and the sound of Hierro clashing with Hierro, buckling the sandy earth underneath their soles respectively. The following connection of skull ramming skull sent Nelliel's person rocking back, tumbling head over heels. Her frame soared past both Lilynette and Ichigo, crashing onto her backside with a five meter drag across the grained ground.

"_Is this for real?! Nel is being overpowered?!_" Ichigo thought with horror etched onto his features.

With scabbard still in hand, Nelliel tried to rise, finding herself flipping up into a crouch. Eyes widened upon finding herself knee bent before Rana's shadow, looking at her from her left flank. Even as her silver eyes looked up at the burning left iris, she'd fail to properly block a spinning kick to her left cheek. The kickback was enough to send a deafening pop in the air, distending the earth and sending Nelliel flying back in a pinwheeling fashion.

Tried as she might, she couldn't halt her momentum, leading her to be be kicked in the face by a instantaneously arriving Rana. A pained gasp escaped her face as blood spewed from her split lips, her body rising in a pendulum fashion, halting only when her left ankle was grasped by a gloved right hand of the Privaron's. Maddening glee crossed Rana's visage when she hurtled Nelliel into the desert bed with unforgiving strength, creating a plume of upheaving sand in the wake of the bludgeoning feminine frame.

"That...bitch!" Ichigo turned his head, seeing Lilynette's person practically bathed in anger. Rivulets of blue Reishi danced along her lithe body, her pink eye tearing up as it turned towards Rana's person. Her fingers dug tightly into her palms, fists cracking under the stress she was placing them under. "I'll kill her!"

Something clicked in the strawberry tressed man's mind. Why was he, the stronger one, paralyzed with fear while the little girl was barely holding herself back? The woman who risked her life to save him, when he had done so many times over, was now in jeopardy by a new foe. One that he knew shouldn't be allowed to have her way, no matter the history she has with her.

"_Nel just regained her true form. I bet that fight with Nnoitra took a lot more out of her than she'd admit,_" Ichigo thought as his eyes glared at Rana's form, now throwing punches into a staggering Nelliel, "_this Arrancar is strong. She might be as strong as Nel. She can't handle someone of that caliber right now!_"

Eyeing at the other spectating Arrancars, he noted that they didn't seem eager to join...yet. He knew it had something to do with the fact that it was Nel facing Rana. But what kept them from swarming? Seeing his partially buried sword only a handful of meters away, Ichigo balled his fists with readiness. Turning his head back, he saw Nelliel skirt back from the most recent roundhouse kick landed by Rana's booted heel. Seeing Nelliel's heaving frame, covered in many visible bruises and cuts, gripping her hand over her unsheathed weapon he knew that she wouldn't last much longer.

"Why aren't ya drawin' your sword?" Rana asked with a frown, lowering her leg back to the ground, standing perpendicularly aligned to battered Nel.

"I've already taken a life today. I rather not take another," Nelliel said stoically in between gasps of air. As an addendum, she also remarked with a cold glare at Rana's own irate face, "besides, I have no intention of staining my sword on a traitor!"

A pair of veins protruded from Rana's forehead at hearing that jab. Her face quickly twisted into a look of livid fury, teeth spread wide to emblazon her anger. Armored digits wrapped around her cutlass' hilt, grinding the blade out of the bone engraved scabbard matching the alabaster hued surface of her angular sword guard. When finally unsheathed, her eyes shined a menacing crimson light that reflected off her vertically aligned blade.

"From the way I see it, _you're_ the traitor here," Rana said icily, crouching down, just short of springing forth with incredible momentum. Raising the blade over her head, she swung it down as she synchronized her attack with her words, "and I have no problem cutting the likes of you down!"

"Like Hell you wi-!" Lilynette began to say, before her frame was sent soaring back in what she felt like was a over-the-head toss. Her body comedically collided with Orihime, whom had remained petrifyingly silent upon Rana's arrival, sending them into a heap on the sand. While her eyes spun momentarily at the impact her head had with the orange-haired girl's, she'd note from her awkward position a black silhouette of motion. It seemed like a wraith as it rushed in between Rana and a defending Nel, his frame shimmering into view from the incredible speed he displayed. "-huh?!"

Rana found herself stopped dead in her tracks as her sword was halted by a midnight colored blade. Held up by a single arm effortlessly to meet her downward stroke, the blistering wave of pressure caused his dark cloak to flourish in sync with his colorful tresses upon his scalp. Hazel eyes glared at her as he kept a defensive posture against her aggressive one, but looked anything but pacifistic.

"Sorry, but I have no intention in you having your way," Ichigo said in a level tone, his free hand gesturing in a splayed fashion towards Rana. Before she could comprehend the significance of the movement, a sudden concussive blast followed by a bright azure light of Reiatsu flowed outwards from his palm. It was enough to send her staggering back a good six meters, putting a healthy amount of distance between herself and the sand parted Shinigami.

"_He stopped my blade and sent me back with nothing but a discharge of Reiatsu?!_" Rana thought with a few blinks of confusion. After processing the revelation along with the brief debriefing she had of the Shinigami she was to look out for, her composure returned along with her confidence. "_If this is _the_ Shinigami, I can see why everyone is so worked up over him. He's definitely a dangerous one._"

Seeing his enemy become quieter, Ichigo turned his head towards to his school friend, "Orihime."

"Y-Yes?" She asked, still rubbing her head as Lilynette stood shakily to her feet.

"Please use Shun Shun Rikka to shield the girl and yourself. Our fight is about to get serious," Ichigo declared stoically, his eyes already returning towards Rana's.

"O-Okay," Orihime nodded, very aware of how useless she'd be if she were caught up in this battle. Even the spitfire standing next to her, wearing an irritated face, seemed to understand that she was not a asset to their fight. Wordlessly, she cupped her hands in front of herself as her hairpins glowed and flew outwards, quickly forming a golden dome of repelling light. Raising her eyes towards Nel and Ichigo, she whispered with hope, "please be safe..."

* * *

"**_So, our enemy is Lady Tres and the Shinigami intruder?_**" Sin asked dubiously, taking long strides to be beside Rana.

"Seems that way," Rana said with a sigh, standing upright, sheathing her blade swiftly, "if what Gin has told me is true, she has been replaced by another after disappearing some time ago. Presumed dead, but now I'm going to ensure she's dead along with her Shinigami cohort."

"**_And yet, you seem calm about this,_**" Sin analyzed, blinking at her from above, "**_are you not planning on involving yourself in their demise?_**"

"I don't fight an enemy I have no clue about how they fight. The only time I've done so I paid the price. Let the Vanguard deal with them," Rana nodded to Sin, a wry grin spreading across her face, "unless you have a problem how I use my subordinates?"

"**_I have no attachment to any of my prisoners. The only thing that concerns me is if the mission goes uncompleted and I'm left to clean up after you. Reporting back to Commander Ichimaru about your failure would be shameful, seeing this is a priority from Lord Aizen himself,_**" Sin rationalized.

"Then we're in agreement," Rana said with a nod, turning her head to look at the many gathered ranks of the Vanguard. Seeing that they all knew better than to attack without command or go against her wishes, she smiled with contentment. Raising her left hand up in the air, she swept it at her enemy's direction, declaring aloud, "listen up! Those two are your targets. Keep the other two alive. Aizen has need of the human."

A chorus of eager shouts followed by rambunctious laughter sounded over the mass of Vanguard soldiers. Their forms slowly approached, rising up and skidding down the formations of sand in their way. Each of them ranging from size and shape all held menacing statures and weapons. Even those that did not permeated a unnerving state of being that made them more fearsome.

"How are you holding up?" Ichigo asked over his shoulder, raising his blade at an upwards angle in preparation for the battle to come.

"I may have taken a beating, but it's nothing I can't recover from," Nelliel said with assurance.

"You sure?" Ichigo began to ask, turning his eyes to fully look her over. What he saw made him rethink of what he should say. Nelliel's whole body shined in a layer of translucent liquid, oozing from her very pores. As it did so the signs of her injuries, from bruises to cuts, began to shrink until they vanished entirely. "you're...healing?"

"In my normal form, I can sweat out the liquid over my body and have my cells absorb it to heal the damage. While it isn't Instantaneous Regeneration, I can heal damaged organs that'd normally out of reach of such a power," Nelliel explained with a matter-of-fact tone. Standing more upright, her Reiatsu began to light across her being, flowing upwards like vapor. Looking at her left hand, she gripped it experimentally before looking to Ichigo, "you're right about me, Ichigo. I've lost a quarter of my Reiryoku fighting Nnoitra. I'm not at full power, and yet Rana was never able to resist me even in less of my current state. Something's not right about these Arrancars. Be careful."

"Not sure if that's possible, but I'll keep an eye out," The Substitute affirmed with a smile.

"Take 'em down!" Crowed an Arrancar, sporting a dazzling head of hair stylized into a purple mohawk. Ditching the cloak upon rushing forth in a burst of Sonido, wielding in his right hand a Macuahuitl. The intricately tattooed and torso hole adorned body rushed forth with a manic look in his eyes as he swung his club-blade at the head-turned Shinigami.

Raising his blade, Ichigo easily parried the sideways stroke of the uniquely designed weapon, sending it awry in an opposing direction. A devastating snap kick was launched by the black wreathed Substitute, planting straight into the Shinigamified Hollow's chin to snap his head back with a painful pop. Following up, Ichigo propelled his bare-chested body with a roundhouse kick to his abdomen, sending him corkscrewing backwards in a explosive expulsion of air pressure.

"HAAAA!" Another enemy roared from above, wielding an intricate lance. Long flowing golden hair trailed back from his voodoo skull masked head. Colorful robes flowed over his arms and shoulders, matching the feathered skirt flourishing his invert directioned legs. With both arms drawn back, he intended to impale the Shinigami at the last second as his leg began to retract from the kick.

What he didn't count on was Nel's form gracefully grasping her right hand onto Ichigo's right shoulder. Pivoting her lower body upwards while holding her sheathed weapon to the side, Nelliel bent her knees just underneath the rapidly descending Arrancar. Just before reaching their proximity, she launched her legs up, double kicking him straight into the face. The resulting shockwave deafened the painful snaps and cracks his skull received, shattering his mask easily as his person rocketed upwards in a elliptical rush of kinetic power.

An additional pair of burly Arrancars launched their own attacks, appearing from behind and in front. The one in front resembled a Rhino, with a single horn jutting in the middle of his head while a slit covered his eyes, the rest of his body robed in long white flowing robes. Swinging his spiked mallet forward, he intended on taking both the hand standing Nel's upper body and Ichigo's own upright upper person. The one from behind, a Bull-masked Arrancar, converged with his own attack. Using a pair of black-hued scimitars to behead and disarm them from their rear flank.

Only a single exchange of glances were had between the two comrade-in-arms before they realized what needed to be done. Closing her eyes, Nelliel exhaled, relaxing her grip on Ichigo immediately. At the same time, Ichigo juggled his sword to his left hand, allowing his free hand to reach up and grasp Nel's forearm.

"DIE!" The two Arrancars shouted, their weapons clanging violently with each other as they reached their targeted destination. Powerful reverberations filled the air, faint tuffs of turquoise and orange hairs flourished upwards, but all around missed the two. With Ichigo squatting low to the point of almost kneeling, he swung Nel towards his right, with her legs pointed behind him and her eyes looking back, as her emerald clothed bosom faced upwards. It was a narrow miss, but their timing coupled with Ichigo's speed helped evade perfectly.

Turning around on his heels, Ichigo began to turn to his left, brandishing his weapon as he propelled Nel in a blurring arc of emerald and cyan. Turning about in midair, Nelliel swung her legs around to strike Rhino Arrancar across his face, causing his neck to snap out of socket with a painfully audible pop. As he began to turn in with the force of the kick, his large feet lifting up and off the ground, Ichigo's black sword struck across the unguarded torso of the Bull-Arrancar. The sword easily cut through his Hierro, ripping apart flesh and grinding through organs before exiting with a horizontal arc. Blood geysered from his chest, arching over Ichigo's head, as he fell to his back with a blank look in his eyes looking still and inert.

The moment she dropped to the sandy floor, she took in the sight of three more Arrancars of various shapes speeding towards their direction. Still in a forearm lock with her Strawberry friend, Nelliel shouted as she pulled on him with sufficient force to lift him into the air, "Ichigo! Ahead of me!"

"I got it!" Ichigo retorted in a shout of his own, his body already alight with a burgundy outlined black aura. The moment she turned him fully around, his body speared forward, accelerated by Nel's arm strength combined with his own extraordinary speed. Encased in an infernal blaze of dark Reiatsu, Ichigo thrust his sword in the vicinity of his enemies, barreling through. If anyone saw him, it'd appear as if he had become a bodily clad Getsuga Tenshō, expanding out in a horizontal fashion that cut a swathe through the desert for a good twenty meters.

The sounds of surprised cries were heard as the motley group of Arrancars were caught within the wake of the expansive wave of Reishi. Their bodies were cut or burned away, easily shredding parts from the main segmentation, sending their remains awry across the battlefield. In an instant a number would lie dead and twitching as the wave of force passed by them entirely, crashing through a rising hillside of grained earth.

Landing with a grinding halt, the black-red Reishi petered away, revealing his dark garbed Shikhakushō'd being standing tall. Turning around, he saw Nelliel fending off a number of Arrancar attackers of her own. Pistoning her legs around like a windmill, she knocked back two of them before cartwheeling away from a bludgeoning strike from another bulbous shaped enemy. Swinging her scabbard around, she rammed the sheath's blunt edge into the face of another oncoming attacker before swinging around the emerald container to rapidly beat into the bulbous ape shaped Arrancar.

"_She's not drawing her sword?_" Ichigo thought with utter surprise. The realization that Nelliel was leaving her enemies incapacitated rather than killed, especially in this circumstance, was something he hadn't expected. Was she hesitant about facing her own kin, or was it guilt of slaying Nnoitra?

Ichigo's gaze drew upward as Nel continued to brawl, another enemy prepared to attack from above. Stationary the Hawk-masked Arrancar pointed his hands down at her, resembling the shape of guns. Between the space of the fingers began to gleam a sapphire light, humming and charging with a large amount of condensed Reishi particles within its epicenter.

Just a moment before it reached priming the hands were detached in a black arcing motion, falling to the sandy earth currently the battlefield of his designated target. As the Cero sizzled out of existence, the Shinigamified Hollow's face contorted in pain and alarm seeing his stumps spew out viscous liquid from where there use to be hands. The sight of the dark wreathed Shinigami brought fear and imminent demise, causing his human features to pale with horror.

Any sound that would tear out of his throat was halted by a impaling motion into his chest. Wordlessly the orange-haired man scowled at his enemy as he gasped for breath, only to find blood coughing up his throat. With a wet pulling motion, Ichigo released the sword's hold on his enemy's body, causing the gurgling entity to limply fall to the ground below.

When the body parts fell wetly one after another to the ground, Nelliel halted her actions to stare at the remains. A brief mournful light crossed her eyes, shut out by clenched eyelids. Looking up, she stared up at the more passive Ichigo, who simply kept his guard up and kept his gaze upon her at the earth below.

That was, until Ichigo's body fell to the earth in a violent split second.

"Ichigo!" Nelliel shouted with alarm, as titanic wave of sand erupted from where his dark garbed being struck. The wall of dark earthen grains moved forth with enough momentum to cause all proximate Arrancars to rush away to safety. That was, except Nel, whom simply raised her sword over her head. With a stoic glare, she released a pink-hued fissure of Reishi escape the path of her blade, cutting away the sand and sending either half flying past her harmlessly.

On the other side, she saw Ichigo. Rising up from his knees, the strawberry scratched his head with annoyance, groaning as stood back up to his feet. When he saw Nel halt in front of him, a sigh escaped her lips as she smiled softly.

"You alright?" Nel asked in a low tone.

"Yeah, just felt like I was hit by a train. Good thing I'm a Shinigami, right?" Ichigo quipped with a chuckle, hissing in pain, as a trickle of blood flowed down his brow to his cheek.

"_What was he struck with? Even I couldn't see what attacked him and he described it as a physical force. What did this to him?_" Nelliel asked herself as she sweated the viscous healing liquid from her palm, rubbing it over his scalp much to his chagrin.

"You'd think they'd still be attacking," Ichigo grumbled out, wincing at the pain that receded in combination of the soft moist touch by the beautiful Arrancar.

"I think we proved to them they can't simply use numbers or rush tactics. The thing that attacked you has given them pause," Nelliel explained, feeling the wound over Ichigo's head begin to recede.

"Who you calling a thing?!" A high-pitched, childish tone cried out from beside them. With both pairs of eyes wide and heads turned, they were finally able to see their attacker. The first figure, one of which the talker was sitting upon, was a large Arrancar. A large armored segmentation wrapped around his upper back and shoulders, forcing him to hunch his seven foot stature down, glaring forward like a beast. Large sharp teeth spread from his box-shaped jaw, with beady dark eyes sinisterly staring at those in front of him. Arms behemoth in size clawed at the ground, with digits easily twice as thick as Ichigo's arm clenching with an unnerving intensity. A brutish dark hued sheathe for a double-edged bastard sword lied over his right shoulder over his back, revealing to be his weapon of choice.

The second figure appeared to be the source of the attacks, and one they didn't expect. With a pair of comically small skull shaped ribbons tying her blonde hair up into pigtails, a cute fair complexioned face with pouted lips, her blue eyes glaring with disapproval at her enemies. A dark grey tube top covering her lithe person retained a circular fur laced collar and skirt trim that ended at her upper thighs. Arm warmers of a similar color to her top wrapped up from her elbow to her palm, leaving her palm and fingers exposed but covered the back of her hand. Childish angel wings sprouted from her back and a pair of crossbones emblazoned where her hips were located. Thigh high socks leading up from a pair of dance shoes kicked idly from the larger being's shoulder, heels tapping his left white robed pectoral. A bandoleer wrapped over her left shoulder down the right side of her shirt revealed a ruby scabbard, holding what can be assumed her Zanpakutō.

"As much as I don't want to believe it, I think that's our perpetrator," Nelliel whispered quietly to Ichigo, taking a prepared defensive stance.

"Great, another annoying one," Ichigo murmured as he stood tall, lowering his sword to his side, keeping his grip tightened, "I don't like how she's got that big guy by her. She might be planning something with him."

"Let's assume her attack was to get our attention rather than cause damage," Nel responded matter-of-factly.

"HEY!" The Arrancar girl shouted at them, causing both of their beings to tense. Thumbing towards her flat chest, she snarled as she pointed at them insistantly, "stop acting like I'm not talking to you!"

"Why bother with them, Angelle?" Rumbled forth the brutish shaped Arrancar whose shoulder she sat upon. Earning a downward glance, he looked up with a demented grin of his own, complementing the dark gleam in his eyes, "you already said your hello. Let's crush them!"

"Hee!~" Angelle spread her pearly whites across with a dark smile of her own. Looking up at the two, she rested her hand upon her lap, her body rising weightlessly into the air off her comrade. Crossing her legs, she assumed a form of squatting posture ten meters above the hulkish Arrancar's head. A shining glint in her eyes shimmered just before she shouted to him, "let 'em have it, Duro!"

Duro chuckled darkly as his massive left hand reached up and grasped the sword hilt jutting up from his back. Unhinging it from its lock, he'd briefly utter out, "**Spin**," and swing it forward with a roar, "**Madriguera!**"

During the brandishing of his weapon, the metal would expand and turn into a fiery maelstrom of energy, enveloping him into a twister of force. Rotation circulated underneath Angelle's form, bristling her clothes and hair fiercely, while producing a powerful gust of wind that forced the duo of defenders to raise their arms instinctively. Such a bright light and concentration of Reiatsu was enough to recognize the Vanguard Arrancar as competent at the very least.

When revealed, they'd see any remnants of a humanoid form had diminished. Now standing at a eight and a half foot height, Duro's previous white plating had turned into multiple segments that covered nearly all of his body. Expansive in mass, the plates had an organic appearance to them, stretching all the way to claw shaped arms and feet, additionally covering a rodent-shaped tail wiggling at the bottom of his upright person. His jaunt changed from a brute to a rodent's, with an elongated snout and mask fragments covering his head and jaw, only giving slits for his eyes to look out of and his white teeth sticking out in a sharp manner.

"Let's have some fun, shall we?" Angelle cooed out from above, extending her hands out as if they were about to conduct a symphony.

"Here they come!" Nelliel announced, raising her hand and sheathed weapon.

Grinning, Duro took one slow step forward after another. Gripping his talons in upon his scaly palms, his body lumbered forward at a sluggish rate. This seemed intentional when his body knelt and rolled up into a scaled, segmented armored sphere. A blaze of crimson light jettisoned around his being, causing the armored body to rotate forward and then violently spin, forcing it to move at a unprecedented velocity towards the two of them.

"**Molienda Colina!**" He cried out as his being soared through the air, carving the desert floor beneath him as his rampage made its way to their midst.

In an instant, both fighters leaped to either side, narrowly avoiding the spinning mass of armored plating and Reiatsu. To their surprise Duro's spinning form didn't race off into the horizon but leaped up into the air and reversed directions. Ramming down in between them, a massive expulsion of Reiatsu, sending them both skidding backwards a considerable distance.

"Dammit, he's a lot more agile than I gave him credit for!" Ichigo swore aloud, eyeing the dust filled crater Duro created. Watching the spinning behemoth rise upwards in his direction, he heard the high pitch whistle of his form grinding upon the earth just before rushing him. Spinning to his left, Ichigo's perspective of the world slowed to mere moments as the revolving being continued to trek mere centimeters above the distending sands. Placing a well-timed spin kick to the being's side, a loud pop was heard as momentum shifted and the creature's direction tumbled a good dozen meters in the direction he struck it.

When he landed, his foot throbbed from the impact, causing him to wince at placing pressure on it, "What the Hell is he made of?! I barely sent him flying and I don't see a mark on him!"

"You're a fool, Shinigami!" Duro roared out with laughter as he righted himself up, briefly unfurling his being from his spherical posture, "my body's hide is some of the thickest Hierro you can imagine. Simply hitting me with a physical attack will have little effect on me. If anything that only caused me a slight bout of dizziness."

A sudden whoosh caused Duro's eyes to blink, seeing Nel's form crouched low and leaning down on three of all fours. With her thumb pressed against the guard of her sword, a brief click was heard, signaling the sound of her sword being unlocked from its scabbard. The faint glow from her silver eyes caused Duro to widen his gaze down at her with apprehension. With a sudden shift of swift motion, her sword came flying out in her right hand's grip, swinging forth to strike the lumbering opponent in front of her.

But instead of finding its mark, Duro somehow managed to skirt back in a numbingly fast rush. Not Sonido, but simply a swift lurch back away from the path of her sword. This caused Nelliel's eyes to widen with shock, as this left her wide open for the now spherically bodied Arrancar's attack. Hit by the being with enough rotation to cause her mouth to gasp out in pain, her body drilled backwards along the path of the enemy's aim, sending her skidding bouncing back across the desert ground.

It was when she found that upon gripping the sand that she felt an unseen hand grip her by the legs that she felt herself flail uncontrollably.

"_What's going on?! Why can't I get free?!_" Nel thought with alarm as she rose upward, her body gripped and spread out in a spread eagled posture in the middle of the air. With a wide look of horror on her eyes she saw Duro launch himself off the ground and spin insanely fast at her. With no way to evade, Duro drew closer until she was feeling the rotation's vibrations upon her skin.

That was, until Ichigo appeared above Duro's spinning form.

"HA!" Ichigo shouted with exertion, swinging his blade down with all of his might to hit the spinning balled up Arrancar. A shower of sparks followed by a thunderous discharge of ruptured wind sent the spinning Arrancar downwards to impact the sandy earth heavily. Waves of sand flowed across the battlefield below, and the lack of a rebounding enemy allowed a moment of relief to wash over the Substitute.

Looking over at Nelliel, he saw that the mysterious force holding over Nelliel had yet to be released. Narrowing his eyes, he slowly turned his head over his shoulder, seeing the cross-legged form of Angelle still keeping her hands up. Subtly they moved to and fro, mimicking the sign of a puppeteer. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nel move at odd angles and grimace with discomfort.

"_Looks like the only way to free her is to get of that one,_" He resolved with a flex over his sword hand.

In a split second, the Substitute Shinigami kicked off the air, rushing towards Angelle. Like a wraith his being reached her within the span of eye blinks, his sword arm drawn back and his weaponless hand reaching out to grasp her. When he reached nothing but air as she bent her body back, his sword swung downwards, aiming to cut her down to deny her retreat.

The last thing he expected was Nelliel's person blur in front of his eyes, raising a blade up to absorb the force of his attack with a loud metallic clang. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped, realizing that the force Angelle put upon her was doing more than restraining her body. It was controlling it!

"I-Ichigo!" Nelliel choked out, her eyes dilated and her mouth trembling. She found herself completely unable to resist the force that entwined her arm, forcing it to push back against Ichigo's own blade.

"You bitch!" Ichigo snarled at Angelle, whom smiled with a sadistic grin from behind Nel's backside, "let her go!"

"Should you really be worrying about her?" Came a nasally low voice from behind.

Ichigo's own pupils shrank with horror, followed by a pain-filled choking noise that was drowned out by a bright yellow detonation of Reiatsu. A defined cut, steaming with searing heat, slashed over his back, one that caused him to stumble forward. In that time he saw Nel drag his sword away from its lock and unintentionally glomp into him, dragging him down into the desert floor below. With the force of a bullet train, they both dragged across the grained earth, disheveling and carving through its uneven recesses.

Seeing them both in a sandy ditch in the distance, Angelle clucked her tongue with satisfaction. Her eyes slid to the side at the one responsible for weakening Ichigo enough for her to get the drop on them. With faint recognition, Angelle sighed with annoyance, "What are you doing, meddling in someone else's fight?"

"I saw an opening and took it," Patros responded matter-of-factly, a thin smile gracing his moustached lips, "do you disapprove?"

"I could have taken him if Duro didn't take his sweet ass time," Angelle growled, looking downwards at the pit her partner was embedded. When she saw his form finally lumber out, she sighed and yelled down, "what's the deal?! I thought from the way you stayed down there you died!"

In a burst of Sonido, Duro appeared by her left flank, an embarrassed look crossing his rodent shaped face, "Sorry, Angelle. That Shinigami bastard's hit knocked me out for a second. My head still feels like a ton of bricks rattled my brain..."

"He _is_ becoming a bit of a problem," Angelle huffed, crossing her arms over her chest, briefly knitting her eyes shut. As her pensive look dragged on for a few seconds, her eyes opened with an epiphanic expression. Fist palming, Angelle said aloud with a giggle, "that's it!"

"Uh-oh," Duro murmured, his face covered with nervous sweat.

Clasping her hands together in a semblance of a prayer, Angelle's visage became ecstatic.

"Don't worry," She whispered as a bright pink light grew around the clasped palms, expanding and swirling between the cracks of her fingers. A high pitched whistle was heard during the slow separation of palms, revealing a thumb-sized sphere of Reishi. The light created a dark silhouette across the child-like Arrancar, her grinning visage looking more like a demon's than that of a little girl's, "I'll blow them away in a single shot!"

"Shit!" Duro swore aloud, quickly backing up to get behind Angelle rather than beside her. With Patros seeing the reaction, he too quickly moved beside where the larger Arrancar moved. As the other members of the Vanguard looked up, they could only guess what kind of attack was about to be unleashed.

"EVERYONE!" Rana's voice shouted aloud, distantly standing atop one of the dunes of sand away from the fighting. When all eyes drew upon her, she insistently pointed towards Angelle's direction, "move if you don't want to die!"

In a clamber of movement, Sonidos and mad dashes were made across the desert grounds. Such a large amount of chaos was made that dust swirled around, making visibility poor in the immediate area of Angelle's aim. Though it didn't matter, as the trench of her prior attack carved a long enough targeting reticle for her to use her technique.

"**Bala Mente!**" Angelle cried out as her arms pushed forward, clasping them and her wrists together, with open palms facing the direction of her attack. When she gestured, the compact projectile of condensed Reishi screamed across the air, moving down at an angle. It left distortive waves of heated air in its wake, forcefully uprooting dozens of meters of sand as it moved slowly after the attack's path. When it finally found its mark, an explosion of immense proportions was had, followed by a roaring wave of blistering wind carrying the flames all around where the Arrancars had once stood. Howling winds cascaded up in the air, flowing around instead of touching Angelle's person, creating only a gentle breeze on her body. As the flames began to die down and the fog of war dimmed, she saw a crater easily the size of a football field in front of her, distended to a dark chasmic depth, broiling with heat and crackling with Reishi tendrils.

"T-That was a Bala?!" Padros asked incredulously, his scalp beading sweat as he recoiled at seeing the scale of the attack.

"Angelle's Reishi and Reiatsu is manipulated by her mind," Duro explained with a nervous grin of his own, breathing out with relief he hadn't been dragged into it, "you could say that Aizen saw potential in her ability to be one of the only Arrancars with Psionic powers upon birth. However, upon tampering with her mind, they kind of unhinged her if you know what I mean."

"I...see," Padros said slowly, looking at Angelle's manically grinning face with a look of disgust, "_it's no wonder she was incarcerated. Her power is vast but her mind is fragile like glass. Anything can shatter it and it seems she holds no real qualms with killing her comrades. I best be careful when around her..._"

The sound of a disbelieving gasp brought the two to reality. Angelle's brow sprouted an angry vein, her eyes scowling with frustration. Her grin immediately turned into a feral snarl, complemented by her words, "No way! They're still alive?!"

* * *

Ichigo thought it was over.

One moment he had been kicking ass with Nel, truly holding his own against the Vanguard. They didn't seem like trouble to him, but he was proven wrong when the kid and the beast showed up. The pair outmatched them, being perfectly able to outmaneuver and hit them when they were most vulnerable. When Nelliel was propped up like a puppet, he had froze up, unknowing what to do to save her when she was used as a tool by the enemy. When he received a surprise attack via Reishi discharge, he felt a white hot pain crawl up his backside. It was enough to allow the enemy to send him and Nel crashing into the sand, dragging painfully across its wasteland.

When the sound and appearance of the Reishi bullet made its way, the only comforting thing he took in was that Nelliel was with him to the end. Flipping her around in one last ditch effort to protect her, he put his injured back towards the direction of the attack, hoping that he'd at least dampen the force with his own body. It'd be the least he could do at the end.

But when the explosion happened, it sounded muted. As if it hadn't reached him all the way. Blinking a few times, Ichigo shakily looked over his shoulders, surprised to find a smoke curdling silhouette standing next to a tall wall of transparent energy. It was webbed all over, shattered at a indented point, as if something was repelled despite cracking its structure. When the figure came into complete focus, he saw another drop next to him, causing him to blink rapidly.

"It appears we reached you in time," Byakuya said stoically, not bothering to look at Ichigo as he faced the wall of dissipating Bakudo energy, "Ichigo Kurosaki."

"B-Byakuya!" Ichigo cried out with surprise.

"To think," Another voice said from beside Ichigo's left flank, looking down at him with a disapproving scowl, "the man who caught me off guard and two other Lieutenants, not to mention fought evenly with Captain Kuchiki is in such a state. What a sorrowful appearance you have donned, Mr. Kurosaki."

"H-Hey," Ichigo began to quip, raising a hand to point at him with a confused blink, "do I...know you?"

"Chōjirō Tadaoki Sasakibe, Lieutenant of the First Division," Chōjirō introduced himself, bowing halfway to the sprawled Substitute, "it is good to make your acquaintance, though I'm sure we both wished to have been under better circumstances."

Upon saying this, the Lieutenant gestured to Ichigo's seemingly provocative posture over Nelliel. Blinking a few times, Ichigo looked back and forth from Nel's blank curious visage to Chōjirō's irritated scowl. With a bright blush flaring over his cheeks, Ichigo flipped himself off of Nel's person and scrambled to his feet, "T-T-This isn't what it looks like-!"

"I'm not blind, Kurosaki, I can see you're infatuated with her," Lieutenant Sasakibe retorted, his gaze drawing away from the two of them.

"Wait, you like me?" Nelliel blinked innocently up at Ichigo, tapping her chin with her own finger.

"No! I mean yes! Gah!" Ichigo began pulling at his hair, eyes scrunching up at being prodded by the squatting female. When he felt her touch on his back, he yelped and turned around to see her moist hand running across his back's cut. Before he could say anything, he saw Nelliel's expression soften, smiling contentedly.

"Good," Nel whispered softly, finishing sealing his wound as she had done to herself seconds earlier, "that makes me happy."

"Uhhh-"

"Enough idle chatter," Byakuya said sternly, his eyes locking onto a group of figures approaching them, "the enemy has decided to take initiative."

As the Head of the Kuchiki Clan said this, a tandem of the Vanguard's forces manifested through Sonido. Standing afar was the livid Angelle Cooney, now hovering in the air in front of the wary Padros and Duro. But when she saw the pair of Shinigami standing beside her prey, her smile returned and her mood turned back to a playful if not menacing spirit. In her mind there was more than enough playthings to last her awhile instead of being done away in an instant.

But to her chagrin, Rana appeared at the forefront, flanked by Sin and her Privaron comrades tailing behind.

"My-My, if the Soul Society hasn't just sent a pair of Captains to save the outcast and the intruder. How touching," Rana drawled out in a sarcastic tone, hands propped against her hips in a haughty gesture, her smile sneering at Byakuya in particular.

"Do not mistake this intervention of ours as a rescue operation," Captain Kuchiki retorted smoothly, his eyes deadly cold as they locked onto Rana's, "we're here to eliminate the enemy. All opposition shall be crushed. Your forces will meet their end here, Arrancar."

Hearing this caused Rana to break out into an incredulous fit of laughter. Holding her gut her eyes almost welled up with tears, finally calming down after a solid minute of mock chuckles escaped her throat. Wiping them away, Rana asked in a bemusing tone, "Exactly what led you to believe the two of you can make a difference? Sure, the Shinigami in black and his newfound ally are formidable. They are no match for the Vanguard, let alone we Privaron Espada."

"All I hear is talk," Byakuya retorted back evenly, goading her with a smooth unsheathing motion of his sword. Raising it up to divide his face, he further enticed her with a low toned jab, "is that all your known for, woman?"

Clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, Rana let out a nasty hiss escape her clenched teeth. Raising a hand, she gestured towards the Captain, calling out to her subordinates, "Take this guy down! His worth as amusement has run out."

In such an instant, four Arrancars of various sizes and shapes rushed forth with a kicking motion across the sand. One was the fighter who attacked Ichigo in the first place, wielding his weapon around with a dark burgundy current to it. Next to him was a jackal-masked Arrancar with a serrated blade in hand, while another pair wielded bludgeoning weapons in hand.

"**Scatter,**" Byakuya murmured, in sync with the dissipating petals that became his Shikai, flourishing out in a blanketing movement as if they became the wind, "**Senbonzakura!**"

Sweeping out, the blossom blades rushed out at unprecedented speeds, easily taking the charging four off guard. Lacerations appeared in a matter of seconds, covering their bodies in cuts and causing them to howl or grimace with pain. But even still, it appeared that the scenic method of attack did little more than slow them down, causing them to shake off their wounds before flexing their Reiatsu and mustering up for another charge.

"HA! You think you can take us down with such a weak attack?!" The Aztec stylized Arrancar asked mockingly, as he leaped up into the air with the rest, intending on cutting him down with his comrades on all sides.

"**Pierce,**" A monotone voice graveled out, resulting in quick drawing his katana as it transformed into a elegant English-styled rapier. Gesturing towards their midst, a string of violet tendrils of electricity stretched out, connecting to the thousand blades that had remained unseen by the rampaging Arrancars; including those embedded into the shallow wounds of their flesh, "**Gonryōmaru!**"

What followed was a visceral display of violet-hued electrocution, as a web of high voltage Reishi currents flourished around the mass of clearly visible petal razors. Suspended in the air, convulsing by the energy ripping apart their nervous systems and tearing through their flesh, the Arrancars died a grisly death in front of the ranks of the Vanguard. When their charred remains dropped inert around Byakuya and Chōjirō's stalwart frames, their silhouettes overcast by the still ebbing currents of purple Reishi dancing from the pink-hued blossoms.

"Was that _amusing_ enough for you, Arrancar?" Byakuya asked in a curt tone.

Sooner than anyone would think, Rana's tolerance of her enemies had drawn to a close. Her being began to glow a vibrant scarlet hue, emanating a damning Reiatsu, shaking the ground and crackling the air with its power. Buckling winds whipped at Byakuya and Chōjirō's bodies, causing their hair and uniform to bristle visibly. Tendrils crawled across the sandy floor as the power rose considerably, buckling the ground and distending around Rana's feet.

"Talking is clearly a waste of time," Rana announced, grasping the hilt of her cutlass with her right hand. With a purposefully slow stroke, her sword became unhinged from its scabbard, rising over her head as her red tresses danced in the air behind her. Her body completely alight with her own power, her red eyes glowed brightly with vehemence at her foes as she finished, "it's time I give you the old fashioned Hueco Mundo welcome!"

It was here that a cacophony of ungodly howls shook the sandy bed of Las Noches. To many of the observers dunes rose and sunk rapidly, spewing up spirals of Reiatsu of a foul form. Something moved deep beneath them, rising and moving in great numbers. It was something that caused even Nel's eyes to shrink with horror and her mouth to drop with realization.

"She's...calling upon them?!" Nelliel thought aloud as her stance wobbled with effort.

"W-What do you mean them?!" Ichigo asked in alarmed confusion.

"The-!"

Whatever she was about to say was cut off as she saw long skeletal digits pierce upwards from the ground. While many of the Vanguard scattered and avoided the various bone digits, as large as trees, clenching at the sandy floor, a handful of them including the Privaron stood their ground.

Emerging first would be a haunting visage, colossal in scope, matching the large black body that rose up with it. Its pointed nose stretched out from its masked face, crimson eyes gleaming with no pupils, armed with rows of teeth that could consume the largest of Hollows. Pulling itself up till its large hole was exposed, the gargantuan Hollow loomed over them all, joined with it by what appeared to be thirteen more, forming a cage-like formation around the Ichigo and his allies.

"Menos Grande!" Ichigo called out, remembering their appearances vividly from his first haunting encounter. It had been awhile but he could never forget the beast that made all Hollows he faced bugs to it. The haunting face, the sneering eyes, and the rows of monstrous teeth. Truly it was an abomination among its own kindred, and now it came in mass.

"That's right, Shinigami!" Rana sneered aloud, earning Ichigo's gaze from behind Byakuya towards the confident Rana, "even if you, Nelliel and those two Captains are a formidable force, there is no way in Hell you can fight off fourteen Menos Grande all at once. Combined with my Vanguard, I will wipe your scum from the face of Las Noches!"

Ichigo felt understandably unnerved. With the Vanguard waiting in the shadows along with Rana, it would be impossible to simply avoid the towering giants. Plus, he knew that their Cero were substantial, even back then. If they all fired at once, there was no guarantee they could deflect such a wide barrage of attacks. Even if they'd survive, they'd be easy kills for the waiting Arrancars.

Grinding his teeth, he clenched his hands over his Zanpakutō's hilt, his body tense. Looking over at Nelliel he noticed she herself assumed a stoic if not clearly nervous appearance. With an exchange of glances they knew that fighting them all was an arduous task. Maybe if they all coordinated to attack at once, they could, but there was simply too many of them. How could they face such a force?

It was here that Byakuya didn't even ready himself to face the horde of enemies surrounding them. He stood there, as if confident they had nothing to fear. What was he thinking, Ichigo could only wonder?

The answer came with a sudden twister forming to their right. Shimmering figures seemed to emerge around the feet of a number of Menos Grande, with hands outstretched and pointing upwards. The violent vortex rose up and engulfed six immediate Menos, causing them to unintentionally crash into one another, unable to move within their sand cropped postures. At the base of the cyclone came into appearance four distinctly memorable Officers, having now appeared through a ribbon of sense distorting light fabric falling off of them.

Kiyone Kotetsu stood a dozen meters to her fellow 3rd Seat, Sentaro Kotsubaki. Both of them projected the Kidō -**Tenran**- into the air, flowing forth to be caught by those around the Menos' large forms on their other flanks. Their bodies covered in desert cloaks, similar to the ones Rukia and Renji came adorned in, flapping violently in the backdraft of wind created by their own power.

Standing on the unseen flank was another pair of capable Lieutenants. Momo Hinamori, standing up with her own hands pulsing with aeroforce pressure, a good distance to the left of Nanao Ise. Both adorned their own cloaks, with looks of concentration etched upon their features, fueling the monolithic storm of spinning wind to grasp hold of the Menos. By the time the seventh Menos was ensnared by the large wind, all observers had to shield their eyes from the dust storm that ensued in their proximity, agape at seeing such a large twister form.

"Alright!" Nanao called out, her voice somehow audible through the fierce tower of wind, "it's time!"

The last of the appearing Gotei Officers stood Isane Kotetsu. Her sword, already in its Shikai state, held in front of her in a readied stance. With both hands on the hilt, she thrust the fork-edged weapon into the wall of wind, generating a indigo light from her being.

"Let'em have it, sis!" Kiyone shouted with a grimacing, yet encouraging smile of her own.

Itegumo in hand, Isane called out valorously above the howling wind swirling sand and debris around her head, "**Rinbōsō Kaze!**"

Seconds past as her indigo colored Reiatsu discharged her Reishi into the powerful swirling wind. The wind changed from a searing clout of dust and sand to rapidly dropping temporal air currents. The Menos within began to roar with pain, finding their cloaked bodies freezing over and becoming brittle within the shredding gusts. The air pressure folding in on them broke apart their gigantic frames, freezing and shredding them all the same within the large twister. All at once the twister folded in on the targets, creating a icy implosion that obliterated the dark wreathed statuesque bodies.

Upon completing their attack, Sentaro hollered with victory, "YEAH! We showed them, didn't we?!"

"Whew," Kiyone wiped her brow, partially frosted over by being so close to the freezing twister that had formed by Isane's Zanpakutō, "it took all four of us to make a Kidō big enough to get just half of them. I don't think we can pull it off again-"

"Well, aren't you such a downer!" Sentaro pointed accusingly at Kiyone.

"Me?! I'm just being realistic, you ass!" Kiyone bit back, quickly pointing back at Sentaro from her posture.

"More like dampening my thunder of triumph!" Sentaro retorted.

"Why you-!"

"Quiet you two!" Nanao commanded, quickly appearing between the two through a bout of Shunpo. Her glass doting face looked back at each of them with a scowl, "do I need to inform your Captain of your improper behavior when we return?"

"No, ma'am," Both answered in bummed tones.

"Good," Nanao said with a sigh of relief. Donning an appreciative smile, she looked over at Momo and nodded her head to her, "thanks for keeping us hidden. If it hadn't been your Kyokkō spell, it would have been impossible to launch a surprise attack of this scale."

"I-It was nothing," Momo answered meekly, shying away from direct eye contact from her peer.

Looking over at Isane, she saw the Lieutenant sighed with her own exertion of using her Zanpakutō. She took time to admire the frost and vapors that ebbed from the weapon's tri-shaped edges. The marvelous Wind-Temporal Zanpakutō, carrying power to freeze and shred an enemy in a single attack, making it a very lethal weapon with a beautiful execution with every gesture.

"_If it hadn't been for her Zanpakutō __,__we wouldn't have been able to kill so many Menos in a single blow. As I thought, it was wise for us to maintain a Hadō while she was the one to imbue her power into the Kidō itself,_" Nanao noted with a nod.

"The Fuck did you all come from?!" A sudden shout brought Nanao's thoughts to a close, her eyes drawing forth towards the Arrancar leader in question. Surrounded by a host of her own colleagues, not to mention the remaining seven Menos, she looked quite the formidable fighter. She knew better than to bite her bait, so she chose to remain silent.

"Nothing to say?! Fine!" Rana swung her blade in their direction, a smile stretching across her face, "I'll kill you first!"

As the seven Menos turned their heads, sickening snaps were heard as their mouths opened, revealing bottomless maws behind their sharp rows of teeth. Astronomically sized Ceros began to prime between all of their mouths, charging them up to full power. The overcast of crimson shined across the valley, creating a damning gleam to overcome all those present.

Said color hues changed drastically when seven pillars of white light rocketed downwards, enclosing over the heads of the titan sized Hollows. With their Ceros dissipated and their heads now frozen solid in a pyre of ice, Rana looked up with disbelief. Two figures rushed down from the sky, and one of them attacked the immobile humongous entities. This one she could almost say resembled a Hollow by Reiatsu alone!

"**El Directo!**" Calavera Sado shouted in a warrior's cry, his shield-shaped fist thrusting a pyre of enormous destructive energy through the Menos Grande. Easily shattering the brittle, frozen skull, it followed through and continued to smash through the Menos like a stack of dominoes. With all of their heads decapitated, the large Hollows fell over limply, just as Calavera Aaroniero landed deftly among Ichigo's midst.

"Chad! Rukia!" Ichigo said aloud with surprise and utter relief. Without his knowing, a smile of welcoming embraced his features, clearly having missed the company of faces so familiar.

While Sado simply gave him a thumb's up, Aaroniero's Calavera sighed and gave a rueful smile, "Honestly, you look hopeless without us. Can you go anywhere without getting into trouble?"

"Guess it's part of my charm," Ichigo responded cheekily.

"Cute," Aaroniero rolled her eyes around, resting her Sode no Shirayuki on her right shoulder. Looking over at Byakuya, having spared a glance at her in his traditional stoic stare, she gave a heartfelt smile in his direction, "so good to see you again, brother."

"Hmph," Byakuya huffed with forced indifference, turning his face to look away from her, "it is by mere coincidence that I am here to fulfill a mission. I didn't come to rescue anyone."

"I never said any of that," Aaroniero said with a playful prod, causing Byakuya to bead a single bullet of sweat. When she heard him sigh, she crossed her arms over her chest as she grinned at him, "don't worry, I won't tell Captain Commander about your...personal reasons for being here."

"As much as this exchange of words is charming," Chōjirō said, inclining his head towards their host of humanoid bodied enemies, "we still have a threat on our hands."

Saying this, the full conglomerate of Shinigami gathered around Ichigo and Nelliel, standing before what remained of the Arrancars' ranks. With Rana glaring at them with a potent wrath that only remained in her eyes, it was clear to them that the fight of their lives was about to begin. The battle of the Vanguard against the Gotei Force was about to begin!

* * *

**A/N:** Whew! This chapter is a lot longer and took way too long to update. I do apologize to all those who have been waiting on an update (and yay, 1000 Views, I feel accomplished!) but this month has been quite hectic. Please forgive me and I hope you enjoy this story as I continue to produce more material for it :)

Now to discuss about the Chapter, some key points worth noticing. I'll go in order of events in this Chapter, that way it's easier for you reading the notes can follow better ;)

1 - Grimmjow's Death: It wasn't something I enjoyed, in the sense that I enjoy inflicting cruelty upon the helpless (kind of a contradicting thought given the nature of some of my stories, I know) but it was going to happen. With Aaroniero on the prowl, and obviously no fan of the Sexta, he was going to meet his end by her hand at some point. Might as well do it as eerily and mercilessly as possible right? I hope you liked how I handled it, regardless of him being a fan favorite of many, including myself.

2 - NelxIchigo?!: Now, when I started writing this series, I had in no way had this planned out. Most of the emphasis was going to be placed on Aaroniero with very little interaction of characters on the side. But hey, I thought if I wanted to make characters likable, I had to give them more time and dedication, even if it was a little more than the story's "main" character. In doing so I thought how a aspect of Ichigo that was never touched upon by the author (for obvious reasons to keep himself from being lynched by fans) was his desire or attraction for the opposite sex. To me, Nelliel was the perfect partner for Ichigo and in turn someone that Ichigo could become in awe of (seeing how in this version she won the battle instead of turning back into a child). While it may be a bit of admiration mixed with physical attraction, I believe that a genuine romance can be built between the two. Don't worry, they won't steal the limelight from Aaroniero TOO much, considering we have more important PLOT going on XD

**EDIT!:** _To the above, I omitted the part of where Ichigo admits his admiration of Nelliel TO Orihime. While Orihime will pick up Ichigo's unknown feelings for Nelliel, Ichigo himself won't know or openly acknowledge it. I tried to keep him more in character while keeping this pairing partially intact. Plus, the latter part of the chapter pretty much confirms Ichigo's attraction to her. _

3 - The Vanguard: Among them I created some non-mentionables, those who were KIA'd or KO'd respectively. I hope you liked their designs and the way I used them to give Nel and Ichigo's team battle a cool feeling. The two that obviously stood out the most, in this Chapter, was Duros Montaña and Angelle Cooney. While the prior was a original character I made to partner up with Angelle, Angelle herself is ACTUALLY a Crossover from Tite Kubo's Zombie Powder. I made some adjustments, here and there, to make her a suitable Arrancar, but her overall physique and power base is a reference to Angelle Cooney, the Psykicker from Kubo's first published Manga. Just thought that'd be a good tease for some people who know and a big thanks to Lastation for helping me think of a unique Arrancar capable of being a threat :D

4 - The Gotei Force: Why is only Byakuya and Mayuri here instead of the Captains (and one Lieutenant and lower Seated Officer that came with)? This is a bit of a tease, but this means that the original canonical events involving the Fake Karakura Town's myriad of skirmish/battles is being redone. Yup. That means those who got little to no screentime in this arc get some in this battle while those who SHOULD have been in the Fake Karakura Town fight will be there. But that isn't all. I got a great plan for all those participating and how things can screw up quickly with the most carefully laid out plans on either side

I think that covers most of it. Please leave your thoughts in the Review section below and please be nice about it. I shall eagerly answer any more questions you have in the Reviews or the PM's you send me to my profile's wall. I hope you all enjoyed the read, despite its length

Until then, I'll see you all in the next update of **A Predator Among Us! **


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